Bitcoin Technology Piques Interest on Wall St.
Instead, many of the top minds in finance have come to believe that the software that brought the virtual currency into existence also enables a fundamentally new way of transacting and maintaining records online — allowing people and banks to directly exchange money and assets like stocks and bonds without having to rely on a long chain of expensive middlemen.
.. executives from more than a dozen large banks gathered to confidentially discuss how the technology underlying Bitcoin could be used to change foreign currency trading, the largest financial market in the world, according to people who attended the meeting.
Central banks like the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England have their own teams looking at the technology.
.. The Nasdaq software will allow the trading of stocks in private companies, like tech start-ups, on a new kind of blockchain. This will replace the existing system in which private companies issue and trade shares using paper certificates — a process that means that even basic trades can take weeks to complete.
.. at two Barclays offices in London dedicated to the technology — are looking at ways to use the blockchain to speed up and lower the cost of consumer payments, to compete with credit cards and direct money transfers.
But bankers generally say that most of the work is aimed at changing the systems that big Wall Street traders and investors use to buy and sell sophisticated assets like syndicated loans and corporate bonds.