Don’t expect AWS to launch a blockchain service anytime soon

Bitcoin may be reaching for new heights, but don’t expect AWS to launch a service that’s based on the underlying blockchain technology anytime soon. During a press conference at AWS’ annual re:Invent conference in Last Vegas, AWS CEO Andy Jassy took a question on his team’s plans for a blockchain service.

Jassy seemed anything but enthused about the prospect. In his view, there aren’t a lot of use cases of the blockchain “beyond the distributed ledger.” He also stressed that AWS doesn’t “build technology because we think it is cool.”

In his view, there are plenty of other ways to solve the problems that blockchain technology aims to solve, too, and that many of the distributed ledgers available right now remain very limited in their capabilities.

Still, he allowed for some room to work on a blockchain product in the future: “We are very intrigued by what customers are ultimately going to do there,” Jassy said.

AWS competitors like Microsoft and IBM seem to feel more bullish about blockchain services and distributed ledgers. Over the course of the last few months, we’ve seen a number of them launch both blockchain services and pilot projects with a number of their customers. For the time being, though, it doesn’t look like Amazon plans to join this group.