Germany-based transaction services provider Deutsche Bourse has set up dedicated digital assets, blockchain technology and ‘New Market Structures’ department to help it explore the groundbreaking potentials of distributed ledger technology, as stated in a news release by Finextra on September 3, 2018.
Deutsche Bourse Crypto and DLT Fever
According to a Finextra report, Deutsche Bourse has made Jens Hachmeister the head of a 24-man team whose primary objective would be to coordinate all distributed ledger-related operations of the group.
Hachmeister stated,
“Deutsche Borse has been active with the technology in the first phase of ideation and exploration. We invested in various initiatives to create a sound understanding of the trends, the technology, and its potential within the traditional segments of the value chain.”
It’s worth noting that Deutsche Bourse has since latched onto the blockchain and cryptocurrency bandwagon and has been figuring out ways to put the nascent technologies to excellent use, including collaborating with international securities depositories to formulate methods of utilizing distributed ledgers and smart contracts to mobilize scarce collateral.
Deutsche Bourse has also jointly developed a live prototype for a DLT-powered securities settlement system with Deutsche Bundesbank, which is the independent central bank of Germany.
That’s not all, back in August 2018, Blockchain Reporter informed that Deutsche Bourse had acquired a minority stake in HQLAx, a collateral lending solution and liquidity provider developing a highly functional DLT-based platform for securities lending.
Blockchain Opens New Horizons
Hachmeister has also made it clear that this is the first time the Deutsche Bourse Group as a whole would implement blockchain solution that would cover the entire conglomerate, adding that the initiative is a significant move in the right direction as it would offer the group an opportunity to build new market structures and more. In his words:
“DLT is a key opportunity for the creation of new market structures, adding new products onto our present structures and enhancing our existing offerings.”
He noted that while blockchain technology may not have all the answers to the questions of humans, the digital economy is however fast moving away from archaic ways of doing things and adopting peer-to-peer systems. And with the decentralization potentials of blockchain tech, it’s only a matter of time before DLT “disrupts the capital markets infrastructure.”
Established in 1992, Deutsche Bourse AG offers clients equity trading platforms, derivatives markets, and other financial services.
In May 2018, reports emerged that the German company had started studying the cryptospace and could begin offering bitcoin-linked investments to clients in the near future.
