{"id":27282,"date":"2015-05-26T22:44:38","date_gmt":"2015-05-26T22:44:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci027cfe77f00a26c3"},"modified":"2015-05-26T22:44:38","modified_gmt":"2015-05-26T22:44:38","slug":"nasdaq-push-forward-blockchain-applications-1432680278","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/business\/nasdaq-push-forward-blockchain-applications-1432680278","title":{"rendered":"Nasdaq to Push Forward with Blockchain Applications"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On May 11, the leading stock exchange Nasdaq announced<\/a> that it would begin experimenting with the blockchain technology that powers Bitcoin. The Wall Street Journal<\/em>reported<\/a> that Nasdaq will start with a pilot project in Nasdaq Private Market<\/a>, a recently launched marketplace that handles pre-IPO trading among private companies.<\/p>\n

\u201cUtilizing the blockchain is a natural digital evolution for managing physical securities,\u201d said Nasdaq CEO Bob Greifeld in the announcement. Speaking with The Financial Times<\/em>, Greifeld noted<\/a> that he wants Nasdaq to be \u201ca leader in the field.\u201d He added that the network could potentially revolutionize the time it takes to finalize deals on U.S. securities markets.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a big believer in the ability of blockchain technology to effect fundamental change in the infrastructure of the financial services industry,\u201d said Greifeld. \u201cClearinghouses are a wonderful invention, but if you have a public ledger that is trusted, you can evolve back to a bilateral (trading) world but proceed with instantaneous settlement. We currently settle at T+3 [within 3 days]. Why not settle in 5-10 minutes?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Financial Times<\/em>notes<\/a> that shortening settlement times for trading could reduce the risk that counterparties would not be paid, while also cutting the amount of collateral, or insurance, used to back trades. For the Nasdaq Private Market, using the blockchain means transforming the recording of transactions from paper certificates and spreadsheets to an audited record of the lineage of ownership of private securities.<\/p>\n

The Financial Times<\/em>\u2019 article includes a video with explanations about Bitcoin and the blockchain. The video notes that everyone from banks to stock exchanges and Silicon Valley technologists are starting to make bets on Bitcoin companies.<\/p>\n

David Birch, Director of Consult Hyperion<\/a>, a specialist electronic transactions consulting firm that advises governments and large companies on electronic identity and electronic money, believes that the real value of Bitcoin is independent of the highly volatile exchange rate of the bitcoin currency.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think when you see people investing in Bitcoin, it sounds like they are investing in the currency,\u201d Birch says in The Financial Times<\/em> video. \u201cBut I think you\u2019ll find they are not really. The institutional money that is going in, is going into the underlying technology, not the payment instrument itself. So, investing in Bitcoin doesn\u2019t really mean investing in bitcoin. It means investing in what they call the blockchain technology, which is the new technology that sits underneath Bitcoin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Birch acknowledges the importance of bitcoin price as a means to incentivize end-users to participate in keeping the Bitcoin blockchain going, but he is persuaded that \u201cin the long run, that is unsustainable.\u201d He notes that the Bitcoin blockchain is not the only blockchain, but there are other blockchains and other ways of incentivizing people to maintain blockchains.<\/p>\n

It appears that Birch agrees with the growing persuasion<\/a>, in the financial and regulatory sectors, that the promising blockchain technology will eventually have to be adapted to non-Bitcoin blockchains with different features, more appealing to the financial mainstream. In a recent research paper titled \u201cOne Bank Research Agenda<\/a>,\u201d the Bank of England called for further research to devise a system that could use distributed ledger technology without compromising a central bank\u2019s ability to control its currency.<\/p>\n

Nasdaq isn\u2019t planning to develop an alternative blockchain. Rather, it plans to leverage the colored coin protocol Open Assets<\/a>, which works on the original Bitcoin blockchain.<\/p>\n

Photo bifshadow<\/a> \/ Flickr<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On May 11, the leading stock exchange Nasdaq announced that it would begin experimenting with the blockchain technology that powers Bitcoin. The Wall Street Journalreported that Nasdaq will start with a pilot project in Nasdaq Private Market, a recently launched marketplace that handles pre-IPO trading among private companies. \u201cUtilizing the blockchain is a natural digital […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3509,"featured_media":27281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3515,3328,340,1487],"class_list":{"0":"post-27282","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-blockchains","9":"tag-colored-coins","10":"tag-nasdaq","11":"tag-securities"},"author_data":{"id":3509,"name":"Giulio Prisco","nicename":"giulio-prisco","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2d091b908741b627d89036dd43748bb5c5edcfe9f805501703e2c3af34dadfca?s=96&d=robohash&r=g"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/nasdaq-to-push-forward-with-blockchain-applications.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3509"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}