Tag Archives: symbiont

blockchain-equities-ats-overstock

What’s Next? A Blockchain-Powered ATS for Equities

“What’s Next? Well, for those familiar with Patrick Byrne, the controversial and innovative founder of Overstock.com, one of the first online retailers to embrace the use of bitcoins, it should not be a surprise that Overstock’s chief honcho would ‘get the joke’ and realize its all about the underlying technology that powers cryptocurrency applications, known as distributed ledger. While bitcoin currency continues to encounter challenges in terms of mass embracement, the real grease that makes the makes the wheels turn is under the hood. With that, Overstock subsidiary “T0” (T-zero) is taking a page from both the industry consortium formed by R3 and the Senahill-backed Symbiont –both of which target institutional capital markets usage–and aiming it’s own sights on retail investors by setting to launch an equities-centric Alternative Trading System aka ATS powered by their own blockchain formula.

A distributed ledger is a consensus of replicated, shared, and synchronized digital data geographically spread across multiple sites, countries, and/or institutions.
A blockchain is a type of distributed ledger, comprised of unchangable, digitally recorded data in packages called blocks.
Rob Daly of MarketsMedia (not related to MarketsMuse) provides the scoop..

Online retailer Overstock.com expects trading to begin on its blockchain-based alternative trading system before the end of the year, according to company officials.

The ATS will be operated by Overstock.com subsidiary TO as part of the company’s Medici Project, and it will only handle trades in the company stock, at least at first. So while it’s not an immediate competitive threat to the existing field of 13 U.S. stock exchanges plus several dozen ATSs, the initiative will be closely watched as a gauge of the potential of distributed-ledger technology in capital markets.

The ATS will write completed trades to its blockchain instead of routing them to the National Securities Clearing Corp., a subsidiary of Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., for clearing.

Overstock.com plans to prime the liquidity on the ATS through a new issue of corporate shares to existing shareholders the day before trading commences on the new trading venue.

judd bagley blockchain ATS
Judd Bagley

T0 officials plan to formally announce its partnership with a broker-dealer on Sept. 12. “For those who want to trade on the ATS, they will have to create an account with the broker-dealer,” said Overstock’s man-in-charge Judd Bagley, who declined to name the brokerage firm.

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Investors will be able to select from multiple “very vanilla” order types, which are still in development, he added. T0 may use a so-called maker-taker rebate model to encourage liquidity, but officials have not made a final decision.

The new trading venue is a mix of internally developed technology and the technology T0 acquired with its purchase of order-routing firm SpeedRoute in October 2015. T0 built its matching engine internally as well as the necessary interfaces to the rest of the U.S. equity marketplace.

The company, in conjunction with Bay-area consultancy PeerNova, also developed a proprietary blockchain architecture for the ATS instead of using Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Ripple.

To continue reading the story from MarketsMedia, please click here

blythe-masters-bitcoin-blockchain

Blockchain Babe Blythe Masters in Repo Deal with DTCC

Blythe Masters, the former grand dame of derivatives for investment bank JP Morgan, who after a less-than-glorious exit from her senior role overseeing credit derivatives for House of Morgan and who reinvented herself as a blockchain babe and leads digital ledger startup Digital Asset Holdings, has proven that every cute cat has nine lives. In a press release issued this week, Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. aka DTTC, the industry-owned utility that processes transactions across the multi-$trillion repurchase agreement and government securities markets has entered into an agreement with the startup to test their blockchain application for use within the $2.6tril repo market sleeve so that lenders and borrowers across the often illiquid repo market can have a more efficient tool to track securities and cash flowing between counterparties.

Digital Asset Holdings, for which Masters is Chief Executive Officer, is considered one of the top 3 fintech companies focused on leveraging digital ledger technologies, the basic foundation of the cryptocurrency bitcoin. R3 Blockchain Group, whose investors include a consortium of 42 investment banks and financial service firms and is led by former inter-dealer broker David Rutter, along with Symbiont, the creator of Smart Securities and sponsored by merchant bank SenaHill Partners, are considered to be the other leading players in the space seeking to ‘institutionalize’ the value proposition of the technology that powers bitcoin.blythe-masters-marketsmuse

(WSJ)-Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., a firm at the center of Wall Street’s trading infrastructure, is about to give the technology behind bitcoin a big test: seeing whether it can be used to bolster the $2.6 trillion repo market.

DTCC said in a statement Tuesday that it will begin testing an application of blockchain, the digital ledger originally used to track ownership and payments of the cryptocurrency bitcoin, to help smooth over problems in the crucial but increasingly illiquid corner of short-term lending markets known as repurchase agreements, or “repos.”

Repos play a critical role in the financial system by keeping cash and securities circulating among hedge funds, investment banks and other financial firms.

DTCC, an industry-owned utility that helps settle trades in the repo market and elsewhere, wants to apply blockchain technology to the market, so that lenders and borrowers can keep track of securities and cash flowing between firms in real time.

To test blockchain’s ability to improve repo trading, DTCC has tapped Digital Asset Holdings LLC, a startup run by former J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. executive Blythe Masters. Earlier this year, DTCC invested in the firm focused on blockchain applications, along with a range of banks including J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and others.

 

For the full story from WSJ, please click here

fintech-blockchain-bonds

Even Blockheads Get Blockchain and Corporate Bond Issuance

MarketsMuse fintech and fixed income curators are both noticing increasing upticks in stories relating to the use of blockchain technology specifically for use within the corporate bond issuance process. We might have been one of the first to focus on this application despite the early stage push back from IT blockheads within the securities industry who “didn’t get the joke”–but for those who missed the first memos, below is a good primer. The real meat is at the bottom.

(AllCoinNews)–This month, a paper examining how blockchain technology might be used to issue and trade bonds more effectively was published by the 2015 Freshfield Steven Lawrence Scholars. Aimed at first year law students in the UK, the Freshfields Stephen Lawrence Scholarship Scheme is designed to address under-representation of black men from low-income households in large commercial law firms.

In the paper, the scholars propose and analyse two different blockchain-leveraged bond trading systems, one that utilizes a closed pool of banks to verify transactions – Bond Blockchain 1.0, and another that relies on a open pool of individuals to verify transactions – Bond Blockchain 2.0.

According their paper, these two bond systems would have the same core characteristics. All bond issuers will have a user profile with two types of wallets, one for transferring bonds and the other for transferring money. Both wallets would contain the same unit types so they can be transferred on the same blockchain. To add units to the wallets, money needs be deposited or bonds need to be created through the the user interface. Metadata embedded in the units will distinguish whether units are currency or bonds. As a bond is purchased, two transactions take place in the system. Currency units are transferred from the investor’s money wallet to the issuer’s money wallet, while bond units are transferred to the issuer’s bond wallet to the investor’s bond wallet.

The major distinction between the closed and open pool systems is in who they serve. InBond Blockchain 1.0, the system using a closed pool of banks to verify transactions through blockchain technology, the bonds would only be available to institutional investors. This system’s innovation is the disintermediation of the clearing and settlement functions of the legacy bond trading system. The legacy system will no longer be needed as as the transfer and proof of bond ownership will be recorded in the blockchain and the digital account of the new owner. The benefits of Bond Blockchain 1.0 would be a reductions in costs resulting from removing intermediaries and a much quicker settlement time resulting from instant account transfers and blockchain verification in around 10 minutes.

MarketsMuse Editor Note: Towards understanding how/where/why blockchain technology is actually being implemented for use in corporate bond issuance, our curators encourage you to go directly to the source: fintech firm Symbiont –which is backed by among others, SenaHill Partners.

 

top fintech bankers

Institutional Investor’s Top-Ranked FinTech Bankers Include…

Institutional Investor Magazine has recently announced the world’s top 35 FinTech Bankers, and…

As astutely noted by Institutional Investor Magazine’s Senior Editor Jeffrey Kutler, “The origin of the term “fintech” is difficult to pinpoint; only very recently has it become an accepted label for one of the hottest segments of the technology market. The availability of high-­performance computing and low-cost distribution channels is attracting a steady stream of entrepreneurs with ideas for improving, if not revolutionizing, financial products and processes — and investors are in hot pursuit.”

With that lead in, MarketsMuse curators are happy to excerpt II’s latest ranking report, this one profiling the top fintech bankers and financiers. We extend a special salute and shout out to merchant bank SenaHill Partners, led by securities industry veterans Neil DeSena and Justin Brownhill—whose boutique merchang banking firm is ranked within the top 20 of 35 firms profiled by Institutional Investor’s global survey.

Institutional Investor’s first Fintech Finance 35 ranking turns a spotlight on the financiers who are abetting this flowering of innovation. They include deal makers at various stages of the investment cycle and facilitators of the incubating, mentoring and capital-­raising ecosystems that accelerate promising financial start-ups’ paths to commercialization.

According to one global tally, by consulting firm Accenture, fintech investment tripled in 2014, to $12.2 billion, its growth rate dwarfing the 63 percent for venture capital overall. Research firm CB Insights estimates that fintech’s share of total venture capital activity quadrupled between 2008 and 2014, to 12 percent.

That’s the big picture. Here we present perspectives on the boom through the lenses of some of its leading players. (To account for firms’ partnership structures, a total of 41 individuals are recognized.) Opinions and investment theses vary, as does the approach of a traditional venture fund manager compared with that of a corporate strategic investor. But all share a conviction that fintech is here to stay and an enthusiasm for the work, which neither begins nor ends when checks are issued. Venture capitalists typically meet with hundreds of prospects over the course of a year before making a relatively small handful of bets, and through board seats or other types of advisory relationships they provide ongoing guidance, often drawing from extensive industry experience.

The Fintech Finance 35 ranking was compiled by Institutional Investor editors and staff, with nominations and input from industry participants and experts. The evaluation criteria included individual achievements and leadership at the respective firms, influence in the community at large, and the size, reputation and impact of the respective funds and institutions in the financial technology industry — particularly in the current wave of fintech financing.

The Fintech Finance 35 was compiled under the direction of Senior Contributing Editor Jeffrey Kutler. Individual profiles were written by Kutler; Asia Bureau Chief Allen T. Cheng; Senior Writers Frances Denmark, Julie Segal and Aaron Timms; Research Staff Writer Jess Delaney; Senior Contributing Writer Katie Gilbert; Associate Editor Kaitlin Ugolik; and Editor Michael Peltz.

And, coming in at #18… Continue reading

FinTech Dept: Banks Embrace Bitcoin’s Blockchain

It doesn’t take a “markets muse” who speaks in tech talk to know that Fintech is not only fashionable, its now mainstream. And, whilst the early “jibber jabber” surrounding Bitcoin was fodder for Wall Street naysayers, including JPM’s Jamie Dimon, “the worm has turned” according to NYT columnist Nathaniel Popper, a bitcoin expert and the author of “Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money.”

For earlier MarketsMuse coverage of the bitcoin and blockchain movement, click here

In Popper’s most recent NYT column profiling the cadre of banks, along with assortment of startups founded by banking expats, the fintech fascination is less about bitcoins as a currency, and all about the blockchain technology that powers the virtual currency.

MarketsMuse Editor Note: Though some of skeptics sitting on the MarketsMuse editorial stools suggest that these fintech applications should be targeting industries that actually embrace innovation, such as online gambling and adult entertainment, we won’t diss anyone by selling near-term straddles.

“…Nowhere, though, are more money and resources being spent on the technology than on Wall Street — the very industry that Bitcoin was created to circumvent.

“There is so much pull and interest on this right now,” said Derek White, the chief digital officer at Barclays, the British global bank, which has a team of employees working on about 20 experiments that explore how the technology underlying Bitcoin might change finance. “That comes from a recognition that, ‘Wow, we can use this to change the fundamental model of how we operate to create our future.’”

For people like Mr. White, Bitcoin isn’t just a digital token to use for online purchases. 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…”

A few banks have gone public with their work, but most of the activity has been happening behind the scenes. At one private meeting, held in April at one of the Manhattan offices of Bank of America, 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.

“A year ago, it was more of an idea,” said Max Neukirchen, the head of corporate strategy at JPMorgan Chase. “Now, it is a real opportunity. You test it and realize that this can play a big role in our thinking about how our own infrastructure will evolve.”

Who are the players to watch? Aside from the secretive projects inside of each of the 6-pack shops (including JPM!), major exchanges including NASDAQ and NYSE owner ICE are actively throwing resources at blockchain technology applications. On the startup scene, Dave Rutter, a former inter-dealer broker who was a head capo at Prebon Yamane, and then CEO OF ICAP before starting electronic broker LiqudityEdge is now wearing two hats via his role at blockchain wannabe R3CEV LLC. Not to be outsmarted is Mark Smith’s “Smart Securities” product, created by his startup Symbiont. Smith is the former co-founder and COO of Lava Trading and a certified tech wonk with a keen FX markets expertise.  His company, with help from fintech merchant bank SenaHill Partners has so far outfoxed R3CEV by having already set the stage to facilitate the first corporate bond issuance using the blockchain technology.

For Nathaniel Popper’s latest commentary “Bitcoin Technology Piques Interest on Wall St”., please click here

Attention Wall Street BlockHeads: Get Your Bitcoins Here

MarketsMuse fintech update is a “bid on” to prior Wall Street bitcoin initiative coverage, and following is courtesy of excerpt from 4 Aug story by Bloomberg LP reporter Andrew Leising, ” Wall Street, Meet Block 368396, the Future of Finance.”

Justin Brownhill, SenaHill
Justin Brownhill, SenaHill

When Justin Brownhill wants to check up on one of his latest investments through fintech merchant bank SenaHill Partners LP, he only needs to check the ledger unpinning bitcoin. The address: block 368396.

That’s the new digital home for the equity stake his firm made in Symbiont, a startup using bitcoin’s underlying blockchain software to make it quicker and easier to prove ownership of assets or transfer them between buyers and sellers.

Putting its money where its mouth is, Symbiont on Tuesday morning digitized and published several of its equity investments to the blockchain, which drives the bitcoin digital currency. That means the stakes will forever be part of that public record, allowing dividend payments or stock-option conversions to happen automatically.

“I woke up this morning and thought, ‘This is a historic moment,’” Brownhill, a managing partner at New York-based SenaHill, said in an interview after the Symbiont presentation on Tuesday. The merchant bank has investments in over a dozen other private companies. “Our job now is to go and espouse the benefits to all our portfolio companies,” he said.

Wall Street is becoming enamored with the potentially transformational way blockchain could overhaul how derivatives, bonds, loans and other asset classes work, dramatically simplifying the process of tracking ownership and accelerating the transfer of assets from one person to another.

Smart Securities

Symbiont’s innovation is creating what it calls smart securities. The company is now practicing what it preaches: its founders’ stakes as well as shares and options granted to employees have been converted into encrypted code that lives in the bitcoin blockchain — the same ledger where any purchases and sales of the digital currency are recorded. Symbiont customers can do likewise to track changes in ownership interests.

“Today is the day crypto joins Wall Street,” Symbiont Chief Executive Officer Mark Smith said to the room full of investors, bankers and reporters in New York. Representatives of JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley and other financial institutions were among the audience members.

Symbiont’s not alone in trying to bring the blockchain to Wall Street. Other firms investigating finance-related uses of blockchain include Digital Asset Holdings LLC, headed by former JPMorgan Chase & Co. banker Blythe Masters; Nasdaq OMX Group Inc.; Ripple Labs; and the New York Stock Exchange.

In June, Symbiont raised $1.25 million from a group of investors including former NYSE chief Duncan Niederauer; former Citadel LLC executive Matt Andresen; two co-founders of high-frequency trading firm Getco LLC, Dan Tierney and Stephen Schuler; and SenaHill.

For the full story from Bloomberg LP, please click here

Frmr NYSE Capo Niederauer Backs Bitcoin-based ‘smart securities’ startup Symbiont

Tech Talk: Bitcoin’s Distributed Ledgers: A FinTech Innovation..

MarketsMuse Trading Technology/FinTech department profiles Wall Street’s rapid embracement of the tools that power Bitcoin with a look at Symbiont, a company that aspires to disrupt the capital markets process.

Distributed ledgers, the technology behind the Bitcoin blockchain, can be used to issue, trade and process an array of financial instruments on a single, global, decentralized peer-to-peer financial network. And guess what, Symbiont, a startup that’s backed by several high-powered Wall Street figures, has established a platform for so-called smart securities, or financial assets that are programmable versions of traditional securities, using the distributed ledger.

Early investors include Duncan Niederauer, former CEO of NYSE Euronext, and Matt Andresen, founder of the Island ECN. “Symbiont is bridging the gap between Wall Street and the emerging blockchain ecosystem,” said Niederauer, managing member of 555 Capital and a member of the Symbiont Board of Directors.”It’s an exciting, timely and much-needed development for the long-term health of the markets.”

Neil DeSena, Senahill Partners
Neil DeSena, Senahill Partners

SenaHill Partners, the recently-established fintech merchant bank led by former Goldman Sachs trading tech honcho Neil DeSena and former Citigroup tech titan Justin Brownhill will serve as Symbiont’s business development agent. “SenaHill Partners is focused on fintech companies, and specifically on assisting a transition from analog-based financial services into technology-based financial services,” Smith said. “All of our access into the Street comes through SenaHill, so SenaHill is an important part of the Symbiont story.” SenaHill Partners also served as merchant bank and deal advisor to Livevol, the provider of equity and index options technology and market data services. During the first week of June, Livevol entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by options exchange CBOE Holdings, Inc.

“The real value of this new technology is in the underlying protocol, the distributed nature of the Bitcoin blockchain, and the immutable nature of its ledger,” says Symbiont CEO Mark Smith. The distributed ledger is “a way to create new securities that could solve some of the problems that existed in the more opaque, less transparent, less liquid markets,” Smith said.

“We have launched Symbiont to create a generic platform that can operate on multiple types of cryptographically protected distributed ledgers to create what we are trade marking Smart Securities,” said Smith. “It’s a digital security that can be programmed with all the terms and conditions of a financial instrument. Once issued on a block chain, it can act autonomously to execute and extract terms and corporate actions without any human intervention.”

MarketsMuse sends a shout-out and thumbs up to June 18 reporting of this story by MarketsMedia.com