I have seen a number of references in the .edit lately to big banks talking about how the blockchain represents a real innovation but how bitcoin itself is useless. This sounds to me like an attempt to adopt some of the advantages of bitcoin for the established banking system without giving up any of their centralized power. It seems silly to me because a large part of the appeal and value of bitcoin is its decentralized nature.

 So my question is is there anything to this talk of the blockchain being the real value of bitcoin, or is this just hogwash from the big banks? Or maybe someone can link to a thread where this is discussed in detail.