Well, here´s another one. Enjoy.
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Nasdaq Signals Confidence in Bitcoin, Not Just the Blockchainby SARAH TODD
MAY 19, 2015 3:10pm ET
Critics often pay Bitcoin a backhanded compliment by calling it the Napster of finance. The underlying technology may change how business is done, they say, but the system itself isn't long for this world.
Now the Nasdaq stock exchange is challenging that conventional wisdom by not only testing Bitcoin's much-vaunted blockchain technology, but doing so on the Bitcoin network.
Last week Nasdaq announced plans to use Bitcoin's blockchain – a real-time public ledger of transactions – with the exchange's private markets platform, designated for firms preparing for initial public offerings. Users will be able to issue and transfer securities on the blockchain via the Open Assets protocol, which uses specific units of bitcoin as tokens to represent ownership of equity shares or other assets. These tokens are referred to as "colored coins." If all goes well, Nasdaq may expand its use of blockchain technology to other businesses, including its central counterparty clearinghouses and central security depositories, according to a person familiar with the company's thinking.
The shift to the blockchain represents a leap into the digital age for Nasdaq. Most stock exchanges use an outdated record-keeping system that relies on paper certificates. Bitcoin's distributed ledger will improve the auditability of Nasdaq's records and allow officials to keep better track of ownership of assets as they change hands, according to the person familiar with the decision.
Nasdaq is far from the only big-name firm to proclaim interest in using distributed-ledger technology to facilitate speedier, cheaper and more auditable transactions. But financial firms have typically dismissed Bitcoin itself as too risky for mainstream use.
Cryptocurrency researcher Tim Swanson explained this hesitancy in a report earlier this year, writing that banks were unlikely to adopt Bitcoin's "permissionless ledger" because the anonymity of blockchain users would make it hard to hold anyone accountable in instances of fraud or other transactions gone awry.
But now the financial industry has a "brand-name firm experimenting for real" with the Bitcoin blockchain, as Richard Gendal Brown, IBM UK's executive architect for innovation in banking and financial markets, wrote in a blog post last week. Nasdaq's move lends credence to the idea of using "the inherent security and open-access of the Bitcoin system to 'carry' representations of real-world assets," Brown wrote. "Dismissing [Bitcoin] entirely could be a big mistake." ..... more
http://www.americanbanker.com/news/bank-technology/nasdaq-signals-confidence-in-bitcoin-not-just-the-blockchain-1074405-1.html
