According to latest reports, Nasdaq is planning to bring its blockchain knowhow to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the South China Morning Post reported.
Adena Friedman, president and chief operating officer at Nasdaq, said last week that it was Nasdaq’s priority to work with the Hong Kong exchange. In May, Nasdaq launched the Nasdaq Financial Framework which opened its blockchain services to over hundreds of market operator clients across the globe.
Last month, the Fintech Facilitation Office (FFO) of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), in collaboration with the Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI), announced plans on launching the “HKMA-ASTRI Fintech Innovation Hub” – a new facility to support research and adoption of fintech, and testing of blockchain or distributed ledger technology solutions. In addition, the FFO also recently announced the launch of the Fintech Supervisory Sandbox scheme for banks.
Earlier in June, ASTRI said that it will prepare white paper on the blockchain technology, which will provide guidance to banking and other sectors and seek contribution from experts across the globe.
Friedman could not confirm which of its clients have begun incorporating the new technology, the Post said. However, she said that blockchain was generally being implemented in unregulated over-the-counter instruments that are traded on a dealer network rather than on a centralised exchange.
“It [blockchain] enables really illiquid assets to be traded more freely and more efficiently, to not have to sit there and hold contracts on someone’s desk, but to put things online. It’s not starting yet in the regulated exchanges for the most part,” Friedman said. “The [Hong Kong markets] can use ours or they can use someone else’s – we’re agnostic to that in terms of how the technology is created.”
More recently, Nasdaq has filed a patent for a method of using blockchain technology to secure records of exchange transactions, according to a US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) application published on 6 October.
