NASDAQ unveiled Tuesday (Oct. 27) its roster of private company clients that will use Linq, its blockchain-enabled platform.
Among the first participants, according to a press release: Chain.com; ChangeTip, which allows monetary tips to be exchanged through social media; PeerNova, a ledger and database company; Synack, a security company; Tango, a free mobile messaging app, and Vera, a mobile device and security company. The blockchain technology itself had been slated at press time for a debut in Las Vegas at the Money20/20 event.
Linq is a digital ledger technology that uses blockchain to track share exchanges, facilitate the issuance of shares and catalog transactions between privately held companies. NASDAQ says the blockchain technology complements ExactEquity, the cloud-based solution that oversees capitalization table management and stock plan administration.
[bctt tweet=”Linq is a digital ledger technology that uses blockchain to track share exchanges.”]
Linq itself had been announced back in May and is the initial platform in NASDAQ’s enterprise-wide blockchain initiative, developed in partnership with Chain.com, a provider of blockchain infrastructure, and also global design firm IDEO. In the next step in blockchain initiatives, NASDAQ said it will develop blockchain technology in Estonia to manage proxy voting in that country.
Since the May 2015 disclosure by NASDAQ of its blockchain initiative, the focus has been to help change the way securities trading is conducted, with an eye on ramping up speed and also security. One byproduct, management told Financial Times, could be that the actual manner in which deals conducted across the securities markets in the United States could be changed radically, speeding consummation. NASDAQ is not the first exchange to take a plunge into the cryptocurrency world. The New York Stock Exchange earlier this year said that it had taken an investment stake in the currency itself, through Coinbase, which is a bitcoin exchange rather than a blockchain enterprise.
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