I am relatively new to the Bitcoin ecosystem. I have tried to understand how the tech works, and have a basic handle of the concepts.
At this stage I am struggling to understanding the hype around "blockchain minus bitcoin" and the excitement shown by mainstream industry for such a platform. Basically I am unable to really understand how incumbents financial institutions are planning to adopt blockchain technology while shunning bitcoin itself. From my understanding of the technology tokens (like bitcoin) are a necessity to maintain the security of the blockchain. And even at the scale of bitcoin's adoption mining centralisation is a reality and we are essentially at the mercy of our comrades in China. What hope do smaller scale tokens available to invited audience have?
Can someone explain what a blockchain based on a limited membership really achieves, and why is it such a revolutionary thing for banking? Aren't what they are talking about just a distributed database with universal read access? I am just unable to wrap my head around this. What am I missing? If this is discussed or written about elsewhere, I would appreciate some pointers.