Wall Street is quietly becoming the vanguard of innovation in crypto-based technologies.
A host of start-ups — from FTX to Celsius and Voyager Digital — have tried, and failed, to make a business out of crypto tokens built on top of blockchains. But, now, established investment banks and asset managers — including JPMorgan Chase, UBS and BlackRock — are trying to take the technology underlying crypto and apply it to trading tried and tested, highly regulated assets, such as stocks and bonds.
How can blockchain ledgers be used for bond trading?
The big idea capturing the imagination of Wall Street executives is tokenisation. This involves turning a legal asset, such as a US Treasury bond, into a digital token that sits on a blockchain ledger, which is shared between many parties.