Okay, so let's try to unpack this. I want you
to imagine something for a second. You're right
on the edge of a huge, maybe even life -changing
transaction. Right. You're closing on a house
or maybe you're a company buying another company
or, you know, even just buying something valuable
online from a complete stranger. And you're ready
to pay. You have the money. Exactly. You're ready
to hand over a massive amount of money, but there's
a catch. You'll only do it if and when you know
for a fact the other side has done their part.
That the deed to the house is clean, that the
software code is actually delivered, or that
the... The antique is real and it's in the mail.
It's that fundamental friction point, isn't it?
The trust gap. It absolutely is. I mean, in an
age of instant everything, we often can't do
that simultaneous exchange. You can't just swap
the cash and the keys at the same time if you're
thousands of miles apart. The digital handshake
just doesn't cut it. Not for high stakes stuff,
no. You need something more. A robust, legally
binding mechanism that can act as a kind of temporary
sanctuary for everything involved just to make
sure no one gets burned. And that mechanism is
exactly what we're going to be talking about
today in our deep dive escrow. It's this fundamental,
but I think for a lot of people, kind of opaque
financial engine that really provides the bedrock
for trust in, well, almost every industry. It
really is. At its heart, escrow is a very specific
contractual arrangement. It brings in a third
person, a neutral third party. The stakeholder.
The stakeholder or the escrow agent, yeah. And
their only job, their sole function. is to receive
and hold the money or the property or whatever
the asset is. And they can't do anything with
it until certain conditions are met. Exactly.
The disbursement is completely dependent on meeting
these very specific predetermined conditions
that both sides agreed to at the very beginning.
That clarity is so important because it's not
just a savings account. It's a commitment device.
Yes. The agent's actions are dictated purely
by that contract. No discretion. None. And I
think, you know, the origin of the word itself
is such a great aha moment. It really helps cement
the concept. The word escrow comes from an old
French word, escrow. Yes, escrow, which it translates
pretty simply to a scrap of paper or a scroll
of parchment. And when you think about why, it
makes perfect sense. It refers to the physical
deed, the scroll, the legal document that this
neutral third party would physically hold on
to. So it wasn't even about the money originally.
Not at first, no. It was about safeguarding the
legal proof, the proof that the conditions had
been met before that final transfer could happen.
It just shows you the concept has always been
about, you know, neutral attestation and a conditional
release. It's ancient, really, but it's modern
form with all the technology and finance layered
on top is just essential for managing risk. So
that's our mission today. For you, the listener,
we are going to move way beyond that. typical
image of a real estate closing, which is probably
where you first heard the term. We're going to
show the incredible variety, the critical protective
nature of this mechanism. And really prove why
escrow is the silent bedrock of trust everywhere,
from finance to tech to law. So let's dive into
our first segment, the foundations of trust.
The agent's role is, in principle, very simple.
But the execution has to be perfect. Their core
function is just receiving and then dispersing
funds or property and only when those specific
conditions are met. So they're just waiting.
They're just waiting. They wait for either the
deal to close, the consummation of the transaction,
or for it to fall apart, the termination, which
then dictates how everything gets returned. This
means that the agent, whether it's a big escrow
company or just, say, a broker holding the earnest
money for a house. Yeah. They're operating under
a very specific mandate. Right. If they're holding
a buyer's deposit on a business, they are holding
those funds on behalf of a principal until that
whole complex deal is legally finished. And crucially,
this agent has no discretion. They can't make
a judgment call. Not at all. They're not there
to decide who is right or wrong or what's fair.
They are purely contractual, conditional operators.
And that leads right to their biggest legal responsibility,
doesn't it? their strict duty. It does. First
and foremost, they have to properly account for
every single penny of the funds in that escrow
account. This isn't just, you know, close enough
bookkeeping. Oh, no. It's a non -negotiable legal
duty. If a state -licensed agent misplaces funds
or can't track them properly, the legal consequences
are severe because they're managing money that
isn't theirs. And on top of that... They have
to ensure that the money is used explicitly for
the purpose that was laid out in the agreement.
That's the critical things you mentioned. If
the money is earmarked to pay, say, a final property
tax bill and some liens. It can't be used to
pay off the seller's credit card. Exactly. The
agent can't just redirect it. Their entire integrity,
their entire legal standing relies on sticking
to that purpose and only that purpose. So when
we think about where we see this, real estate
is obviously the big one in the U .S. Mortgages,
taxes, all of that. It's the anchor for sure.
But the sources make it clear that the mechanism
is essential for securing pretty much any high
value asset transfer you can think of. Right.
I mean, things like buying a big revenue generating
website or the sale of an entire e -commerce
business. These aren't like selling a blender
on eBay. Not at all. Yeah. These deals involve
verifying intellectual property, checking contracts.
They can take weeks or months. And the whole
time that purchase money has to be sitting somewhere
safe. And what's really interesting is that the
rise of low cost online services has kind of
democratized escrow. It's not just for million
dollar deals anymore. Exactly. Even smaller transactions
like a person to person auction or buying a used
piece of specialty equipment from someone across
the country can now benefit. Escrow just removes
that initial risk of who goes first. It effectively
lets you do business safely with strangers. It
does. You're both essentially saying, I trust
this neutral third party to follow the contract
more than I trust the person I'm dealing with
right now. And we see this same idea in other
countries, too. The sources mentioned the UK,
for example. Right. In the UK, it's very common
for solicitors or conveyancers to hold client
money in a similar way. When you put down a deposit
on a property. That money doesn't go to the seller.
No, it goes into a protected client account.
It's held there until the entire transaction
is completed and the deeds are transferred. It's
ring fenced. Precisely. The rules are there to
make sure that money is never, ever mixed with
the law firm's own operating funds. It has to
be available immediately. the deal succeeds or
fails, it's a direct application of that core
escrow duty. We can make this even more concrete,
I think, with some everyday examples like buying
a used car from someone you found online. That
moment of payment is always the most awkward
part. It is. You want to check the car, check
the title, and the seller, you know, they want
to be sure they're getting paid. So you could
agree on a temporary setup where the money goes
into a specific bank account in the buyer's name.
And the funds are only released. Once the buyer
has seen the car, confirmed the title is clear,
and officially says, yes, I accept it. In that
moment, the bank account is acting as the escrow
agent. Another great one is a security deposit
for a rental. A perfect example. The landlord
can't just pocket that money. Legally, it has
to be held separately, often in a protected scheme
or a special account. It's only released after
you move out? Yeah, right. And only if the property
is in good shape and you've met all the terms
of the lease, the deposit is held conditionally.
And maybe the clearest example is in construction.
If you're doing a big remodel on your house.
You never pay the full amount up front. Never.
The payment is tied to milestones. Right. The
contract will say that the total amount, maybe
it's $50 ,000, will be released in stages. So
like 25 % after the foundation is done. Exactly.
Then maybe 35 % after the framing and the electrical
work is finished. And the final 40 % only happens
when the whole job is certified as complete and
it passes final inspection. So the agent, or
maybe a construction lender, makes sure the money
only moves when those specific things are verifiably
done. It protects the homeowner from a contractor
just taking the money and disappearing halfway
through the job. That distinction conditional
payment based on agreed upon proof, that's the
DNA of escrow. Okay, foundation is set. Let's
move into the digital world, because the internet
was probably the biggest stress test this ancient
idea ever faced. Oh, absolutely. When things
like online auctions and e -commerce really started
to scale, there was a huge trust deficit. You
were sending money to a username, basically.
You were. And sellers were shipping expensive
goods, just hoping the payment would actually
show up. Internet escrow emerged as one of the
most critical developments to bridge that trust
gap. It was the tech upgrade needed to make remote,
high -volume commerce reliable. The basic mechanism
is simple. You place the money with an independent,
and this is key, a licensed third party. Once
they confirm they have the funds, the seller
gets the green light to ship. Right. And when
the buyer gets the item, they have a set inspection
period. And the money is only released when both
sides agree that the deal is done. When both
parties verify completion. And this introduces
a really important piece. a formal dispute resolution
process. Ah, for when things go wrong. Exactly.
If the buyer says the product is broken and the
seller says it was perfect when it shipped, the
money stays locked in escrow while both sides
submit their evidence to the agent. And the agent
decides based on the original contract. Right.
The agent system determines if the money goes
back to the buyer or gets released to the seller.
All of this speed and volume. It required a huge
regulatory shift. Let's talk about that starting
in the U .S. with California. This was a landmark
moment. In 2001, the California Department of
Business Oversight recognized how unique and
risky these digital transfers were. So they created
a specific license just for. internet escrow
companies. Which gave them a layer of legitimacy,
of government oversight. It totally changed the
game. It boosted consumer confidence enormously.
And it wasn't just some small startup. The sources
point out that escrow .com, which was founded
by a massive company, Fidelity National Financial,
became the first company licensed under this
new framework. It showed that serious financial
players were backing this. It did. And it's important
for you to understand how this works in the U
.S. There's no single federal license for online
escrow. It's all done at the state level. So
California and Arizona are two of the big ones.
They're two of the most significant, yes. They
have their own rigorous licensing programs that
give these companies the legal authority to operate.
So Due Diligence 101, if you're doing a big online
deal. you should check that your escrow agent
is licensed by one of these states. Absolutely.
Now, you can compare that to how the EU handled
it. They used something called the Payment Services
Directive, or PSD. And the PSD was interesting
because it sort of broadened the scope, right?
It allowed for much lower cost services. Exactly.
Before the PSD, if a small business in Europe
wanted that kind of security for a trade deal,
they might have had to use a really expensive
bank letter of credit. A tool that's usually
for huge corporations. Right. framework allowed
these web -based services to basically offer
the same security as a letter of credit, but
for a tiny fraction of the cost. It opened up
global trade for so many small and medium -sized
businesses. A huge upgrade for digital trust.
But with the growth of legitimate services came
the growth of sophisticated fraud. And we have
to give a really critical warning here about
bogus escrow methods. This is where that verification
becomes, I mean, life or death for your money.
It really is. Scammers have moved way beyond
simple phishing emails. What they do now is suggest
using a neutral third party escrow service. And
they provide you the link to a convenient one.
Precisely. And the victim is tricked because
the scammer has created an entire fake escrow
site. And these sites are incredibly convincing.
They copy the logos, the look, the feel, even
the URL structure of a real licensed service.
So the victim sends their money. maybe tens of
thousands of dollars for a car or a boat to this
fraudulent site thinking it's safe. And of course,
the money is gone instantly. The victim never
gets the product. They never get a refund. Or
the other way around, the seller sends the item
after getting a fake payment received email.
And they wait for money that will never, ever
be released. So this is the key piece of advice
we have to hammer home. How do you protect yourself?
You have to do your own independent verification.
Before any money moves. A genuine, licensed online
escrow company will be listed on a government
regulator's official website. So you should never,
ever click a link provided by the other person
in the deal. Never. You have to go find the state
regulator's site yourself, like the California
Department of Business Oversight, and search
for the company's name. Confirm their license
is active and all the details match. If you can't
find them on an official government register,
you have to assume it's a fraud and walk away.
That is a huge takeaway. Trust must be verifiable
through an independent government source. Okay,
let's pivot now from online shopping to physical
machines because escrow is hiding in plain sight.
It really is. The moment you walk up to an ATM,
you're interacting with an escrow system. How
so? Well, when you deposit cash, the machine
doesn't just immediately dump it into the main
vault and credit your account. It holds it separately.
Exactly. It holds that deposited money in escrow.
It's isolated. And that's crucial for fixing
problems. If you think you deposited 20 bills,
but the machine only counted 19. The bank can
check that separate, isolated stack of cash.
And if they confirm the error, they can return
the money from that escrow hold without messing
with the main vault. It's all about maintaining
integrity. A similar thing happens with a vending
machine, right? A textbook example of conditional
release. When you put your coins in... They don't
just fall into the main coin box. They sit in
that little window for a second. They're held
in a separate escrow area waiting for the transaction
to complete. If the machine gives you your soda,
then the coins drop into the vault. But if it
yams or you hit the refund button. They come
right back out from that little holding area.
That temporary escrow hold. The principle is
exactly the same, whether it's for three seconds
in a vending machine or three years in a corporate
merger. It's conditional release based on an
outcome. That's a perfect lead -in to our next
segment where we go from these quick transactions
to the really big, high -stakes, long -term holds.
Intellectual property, M &A, and even gambling.
These are the applications that really show the
flexibility of escrow in securing not just money,
but information and complex long -term promises.
Let's start with intellectual property, specifically
source code escrow. What is that? Okay, so this
is an arrangement where a software company and
its customer agree that the source code for the
software will be held by a neutral third party.
And why would a customer want that? Business
continuity. Think about it. You're a company,
and you're dependent on a piece of software for
your most critical operations. But you don't
own the code, you just have a license to use
it. That's a huge vulnerability. A massive one.
What if the software company has... major service
interruption or a catastrophic data loss or what
if they just go bankrupt you're completely stranded
exactly the escrow agreement fixes this it says
that if one of those triggering events happens
The supplier goes out of business, for example.
The source code is released from escrow to you,
the customer. So it's an insurance policy. You
get the blueprint for the software so you can
maintain it or fix it yourself. It allows your
business to continue even if the original supplier
is gone. And this idea goes beyond just software
code, right? Oh, yeah. Information escrow agents
hold all kinds of other proprietary assets. We're
talking about detailed manufacturing designs,
lab notebooks filled with research, song lyrics,
even movie scripts. Now, why would you put a
movie script in escrow? It's not about business
continuity. No, this is purely about establishing
legal ownership rights. The independent escrow
agent act as a formal witness. They can attest
to three crucial things. Who owns the information,
what the information actually is, and the exact
date and time it was deposited. So it's like
a legally recognized tamper -proof timestamp.
Precisely. That verifiable record from a neutral
party is invaluable evidence in court if there's
ever a dispute over who created the work first.
It's a legal shield. Okay, so from proactive
legal shields to reactive legal settlements,
judicial escrow. Right. This is often used to
manage the huge pots of money from court -ordered
payouts. Think about a massive class -action
lawsuit with thousands of plaintiffs or a big
environmental cleanup case. The logistics of
paying all those people must be a nightmare.
A total nightmare. So the mechanism is designed
to handle that. The defendant pays the entire
settlement amount into a single escrow fund that's
administered by the court. And by doing that,
they wash their hands of the distribution process.
Exactly. Defendant's legal obligation is done.
The escrow fund's administrator then takes over
the headache of identifying all the claimants,
processing their forms and cutting thousands
of individual checks. And the fund pays for its
own administrative costs out of the settlement
money. Usually, yes. It's a way to centralize
the management of the payout under the direct
supervision of the court. Now let's get into
the really complex stuff. Mergers and acquisitions.
M &A escrow. This is a whole different ballgame.
It's so much more complex than a real estate
deal because the things you're worried about
aren't just physical assets. They're contingent
liabilities, things that could go wrong years
later. How does it work? It's a risk management
tool. When a business is sold, the seller makes
a bunch of promises to the buyer. They're called
warranties. Things like our financial statements
are accurate or we have no hidden lawsuits. But
what if one of those promises turns out to be
untrue, say, two years after the deal closes?
Yeah. The buyer discovers a huge undisclosed
tax problem from before the sale. That's the
exact vulnerability this is designed to fix.
And it's especially important if the sellers
are, say, private individuals who might not have
the money to pay a claim years down the road.
So the buyer needs a guarantee. Right. They'll
require the seller to put a chunk of the purchase
price, maybe 5 or 10 percent, into a dedicated
M &A escrow account. That way, the buyer has
a protected pot of money they can make a claim
against if a breach of warranty occurs. And this
is very different from closing escrow. This is
designed to last for a long time. A very long
time. M &A escrow arrangements are often set
up to last for years, often matching the statute
of limitations for whatever risk they're covering.
The fund is there to cover future uncertain problems.
That long duration must create some serious complications,
especially for the agent. It does. This is where
it gets really tricky. The M &A escrow agent
might actually have to help decide if a buyer's
claim is valid. So they're not just waiting for
a simple trigger anymore. No. The buyer files
a claim, the seller disputes it, and the agent
is stuck in the middle trying to interpret complex
contract language to see if the claim meets the
requirements for a payout. That sounds like a
huge risk for the agent. It's a massive risk.
It's why the M &A escrow agreement itself is
often as heavily negotiated as the main purchase
agreement. And because the money is held for
so long, there must be other logistical things
to worry about. Three big ones. First, information.
The agreement has to spell out exactly what reports
the parties get and how often. Second, interest.
What happens to the investment returns on that
money over five years? Does it go to the buyer
or the seller? That's a major negotiation point.
And the third? The most important one. The creditworthiness
of the bank holding the money. Ah, what if the
bank itself fails? If the bank holding the funds
goes under three years into a five -year hold,
Security that the buyer was counting on could
be completely wiped out. So you have to do deep
due diligence on the financial institution itself.
Wow. OK, so from that complexity, let's go back
to the simplest, purest form of all this. Gambling.
The historical route. the mechanism is just beautiful
in its simplicity two people make a bet on a
future event the outcome of a horse race an election
exactly they each hand over their money their
stakes to a third completely disinterested person
the stakeholder who has no dog in the fight None.
Their only job is to wait for the outcome. Once
the winner is officially declared, the stakeholder
distributes all the money to that person based
on the conditions they agreed to at the start.
It's the foundational concept. It is. And it's
why trustees who hold property for beneficiaries
until they come of age are often seen as acting
in that same kind of stakeholding role. That
universal idea of a conditional hold brings us
right back to the most commonplace we all see
it. Segment four. The real estate deep dive and
PITI. Right, PITI. That acronym on your mortgage
statement. It stands for principal, interest,
tax, and insurance. The P and the I, that's the
easy part. That's your loan. That's the money
that pays down your balance and covers the cost
of borrowing. The part we're focused on is the
escrow payment, which is the amount you pay over
and above the P and I. And that extra money is
for the T and the I, the tax and insurance. Correct.
So every month, you pay that extra amount. and
it gets funneled into a long term escrow account
managed by your lender. Then when your property
tax and homeowners insurance bills are due, the
lender pays them for you using the money from
that account. And why do they insist on doing
this? Why can't I just pay my own bills? It's
all about risk mitigation for the lender. Remember,
the house is their collateral for the loan. They
can't risk you, the homeowner, failing to pay
two critical bills. Property taxes and hazard
insurance. Exactly. If you don't pay your property
taxes, the county can put a lien on your house
that gets paid before the mortgage lender if
you're foreclosed on. Which puts the lender's
investment at risk. Severely. And if you let
your homeowners... insurance lapse and the house
burns down, their collateral is literally gone,
worthless. So by managing the escrow account,
the lender guarantees those bills get paid on
time, protecting their collateral. And for some
types of loans like FHA loans, it's not even
an option. The lender is required by law to maintain
that escrow account for the entire life of the
loan. This brings us to a really important point
for anyone with a fixed rate mortgage. Your interest
rate might be fixed. but your total monthly payment
is not. This is the source of so much confusion.
People get a notice that their payment is going
up and they get angry, thinking the bank is cheating
them. So why does the number keep moving? Because
your P &I is fixed, but the T &I, the escrow
part, is dynamic. Property taxes go up, insurance
premiums go up, and when they do, your monthly
escrow payment has to increase to cover it. Let's
walk through the mechanics of an escrow shortage.
That's the notice that always gives people a
shock. Okay, simple example. Let's say your annual
insurance premium was $1 ,200. So your lender
was collecting $100 a month from you for insurance.
Easy math. Right. But then your insurance company
raises your rate to $1 ,320 for the year. That's
a $120 increase. The lender has to pay that new
higher bill. They do. But they only budgeted
$1 ,200 from you. So they've just paid out an
extra $120 on your behalf. That creates a deficit,
a shortage in your account. So they have to get
that money back. They do. So they adjust your
payment in two ways. First, they need to start
collecting $110 a month now to cover the new
higher annual cost. And second, they need to
collect that $120 shortage they just covered.
And they'll usually spread that shortage over
the next 12 months. So that's an extra $10 a
month. Your total monthly escrow payment for
insurance just jumped from $100 to $120, a 20
% increase. And that's why those annual notices
can feel like such a financial hit. And this
whole process of recalculating is mandatory.
It's called an escrow analysis. Federal rules
under RESPA require the lender to recompute your
payment at least once every 12 months. It's to
make sure they're collecting the right amount
and to prevent huge shortages or surpluses from
building up. And if there's a surplus, if they
collected too much, they have to refund it to
you. They do if it's over a certain amount. It's
an annual checkup designed to bring the account
back into balance. Now, quickly, we should just
differentiate this long -term PITI escrow from
the short -term kind used just for the closing
of the sale. Very different functions. The PITI
escrow lasts for 30 years. The closing escrow
might only last for 30 days. During the closing,
The escrow company is like the central hub for
everything. They hold the earnest money, the
down payment, the loan funds, all the signed
documents, everything. And once they confirm
all the conditions of that title is clear, funds
are in, papers are signed, they handle the final
distribution. They pay the seller, pay the title
company, and most importantly, they record the
new deed with the county, which legally completes
the transfer of the property. And again, we see
courts sometimes acting in that exact same stakeholder
role. holding property during a lawsuit until
a judge decides who the rightful owner is. It's
the ultimate proof that a conditional hold is
needed whenever an outcome is uncertain. We've
covered the whole spectrum, from ancient scrolls
to the nitty -gritty of a modern M &A deal. Which
brings us to our final and maybe most critical
segment, the legal reality of escrow agents.
This is so important because understanding the
agent's actual liability is key to understanding
how much security you're really getting. When
you put your life savings into an escrow account,
you naturally assume that agent is being held
to the highest possible standard of care. You
assume they have a fiduciary duty, that they
are legally required to act only and always in
your best interest, like a trustee. But that's
not always the case. No, and this is where the
fine print can really shock you. The legal standard
of duty for a contractual escrow agent can be
surprisingly low. How is that even possible?
If the whole point is security, how can we accept
an agent only being held to a gross negligence
standard? It is a profound vulnerability in the
system. Many standard escrow agreements hold
the agents only to that mere gross negligence
standard. OK, so break that down. What's the
difference between regular negligence and gross
negligence? It's a massive difference. Simple
negligence is making a mistake, like failing
to double check a form. A fiduciary duty requires
absolute vigilance. Gross negligence, however,
requires an extreme reckless or willful disregard
for the safety of the assets. So a simple mistake
is forgetting to lock the door. Gross negligence
is forgetting to lock the door and also leaving
the safe wide open with a sign on it that says
free cash. That's a perfect analogy. The bar
is incredibly high for the person trying to prove
it. And on top of that, these agreements usually
have indemnity and hold harmless clauses that
protect the agent from liability for simple errors.
So if an agent makes a costly but non -willful
mistake, they might be legally shielded from
having to pay for it. In many cases, yes. The
parties in the transaction are assuming most
of the risk for anything less than a catastrophic,
reckless error by the agent. But there is a crucial
exception to this low bar, and it goes back to
what we said earlier about licensing. The licensed
versus unlicensed distinction. Right. Yes. If
the escrow agent is licensed by a government
authority like those Internet escrow companies
in California or Arizona, then those government
regulations impose much higher legal standards.
So the licensing itself brings a higher degree
of accountability. It does. It often pushes their
duty much closer to that of a true fiduciary.
It just reinforces how important it is to use
the license agent. It's not just about avoiding
fraud. It's about ensuring a higher standard
of protection for your money. So when we synthesize
everything we've talked about, the main takeaway
is that escrow is this indispensable tool for
managing risk. It is. But its entire integrity,
its entire functionality hinges on the neutrality
and the legal standard of that third -party stakeholder.
If that integrity is compromised, the whole system
fails. We started this deep dive with a scrap
of parchment, and we've ended up on the critical
reality of the modern legal framework governing
trillions of dollars. A system built on contract
law, but measured by the certainty it gives to
commerce. And with that, let's move into our
outro. We've shown today how escrow really spans
everything from ancient gambling stakes to modern
ATMs, from protecting source code to funding
huge legal settlements. We covered how it underpins
the sale of complex businesses, detailing that
long -term risk management you see in M &A deals,
and how it allows trust to work in online auctions
as long as you verify that license. And most
practically, we demystified the one place you
probably see it most often, your mortgage. We
clarified PITI, the role of T &I, and the mechanics
of that annual escrow analysis so you can understand
why that payment can change and why that shortage
letter shows up. And understanding the legal
realities that your agent might only be held
to a gross negligence standard unless they're
government licensed, that's probably the most
essential piece of knowledge for deciding who
to trust with your assets. Which leads us to
our final thought for you to think about. We've
defined escrow as isolating funds for a specific
purpose. And at a larger scale, that idea is
very similar to ring fencing or stewardship in
corporate governance. Right. So given that so
much of global commerce, especially in these
huge long term deals, relies so heavily on the
ethical behavior of these third parties, even
when they're legally protected by that very high
bar of gross negligence. We have to ask. How
secure is the system, really? How reliant are
we on the basic integrity of a small group of
specialized companies whose primary legal duty
is often just not to be extremely reckless? It
raises that final question. As assets get faster
and more digital, how do we make sure that the
age -old integrity of the person holding the
parchment scroll remains strong enough to sustain
our fundamental trust in the system? Something
to consider next time you put some cash in an
ATM.