The London Stock Exchange Group has drawn up plans for a new digital markets business, claiming that this will make it the first major exchange to offer extensive trading of traditional financial assets on the blockchain technology best known for powering cryptocurrency.

Murray Roos, head of capital markets at the LSE Group, told the Financial Times that the company had been examining the potential for a blockchain-powered trading venue for around a year, and had reached an “inflection point” where it had decided to take the plans forward. It has asked Julia Hoggett, head of the London Stock Exchange, one unit in the broader group, to spearhead the project.

Roos stressed that his exchange was “definitely not building anything around cryptoassets” but was looking to use the technology that underpins popular tokens like bitcoin to improve the efficiency of buying, selling and holding traditional assets.