Nasdaq Invest in Blockchain: BIG Step for Bitcoin Adoption!
Today we’re going to look at Nasdaq’s push into Blockchain Technology.
A few days ago we spoke of regulations and how states in the US are making changes and amending their bill to incorporate blockchain technology. Today, we’re going to explore a similar concept but with Nasdaq instead of the Government sector. We’re going to examine how Nasdaq Ventures is putting their money and investing in blockchain technology and what this tells us about the future trajectory of the industry.
Nasdaq is an American stock exchange and is the second largest stock exchange in the world by market capitalization, just behind the New York Stock Exchange. According to Ethereum World News, the company's investment arm, Nasdaq Ventures has recently invested a substantial amount of money in startups that develop enterprise blockchain solutions. The company they’ve recently invested in is known as Symbiont.
Symbiont is a market-leading platform for institutional applications of blockchain technology. They raised $10 million in a Series B Funding round. Nasdaq Ventures led the round which included many other investors in the blockchain space such as Mike Novogratz's Galaxy Digital, Citi, and Raptor Group. The funding will help promote the growth of Assembly, a blockchain platform created by Symbiont that supports smart contracts and tokenized solutions. Nasdaq expressed a lot of confidence and belief in Symbiont’s future success. Gary Offner, the Head of Nasdaq Ventures noted that emerging products like Assembly could help many companies grow significantly on a global scale.
It appears as though the bearish cryptocurrency market in 2018 has not deterred Nasdaq from progressing forward with cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. There was even an article on Medium, written by Apollo74, describing Nasdaq as the Real blockchain Advocate due to the number of blockchain investments they’ve made over the past few years.
To give you guys a quick overview, while Nasdaq ventures officially launched in 2017, they made unofficial investments in late 2015. They invested in Chain, a cloud blockchain infrastructure that enables organizations to build better financial services from the ground up. In September 2018, Chain was acquired by Lightear, a Stellar-focused company that was formed in late 2017 by the Stellar Development Foundation. Lightyear then changed their name to Interstellar after the acquisition.
Another investment was Stratumn, a blockchain infrastructure designed to reduce operational costs and improve the customer journey. Startumn has also been making a lot of development as seen on the Github page. They’ve last released an update on August 2018 discussing Global Data Protection Regulation and how they are working to uphold these regulations via blockchain technology.
They also invested in Digital Reasoning, an AI solution that enabled digital transformations for financial institutions. They’ve currently secured $30 million in funding, won the sell-side best technology award int he second year, bridged out into the health industry, and also made it in Forbes top 50fin-tech companies. And in Hanweck, a real-time risk analytics provider on the global derivatives markets and data. As for Hanweck, they are now ranked in the top 50 of Chartis: RiskTech100 2019.
So as you guys can see here, Nasdaq is heavily invested into the digital assets, blockchain solution, and digital exchange industries. It’s not just with Symbiont but a number of other startups as well. In fact, Adena Friedman, the President, and CEO of Nasdaq is still even determined to launch Bitcoin Futures and potentially a cryptocurrency exchange if the conditions are well.
She mentioned to her followers on LinkedIn that, “it is difficult to ignore the huge amount that investors, including some of the most sophisticated global investors, have poured into digital currencies in recent years. The invention itself is a tremendous demonstration of genius and creativity, and it deserves an opportunity to find a sustainable future in our economy… At Nasdaq, we are working to help cryptocurrencies gain investors’ trust by offering our technology for trade matching, clearing, and trade integrity to start-up exchanges. While this year will be another proving ground for cryptocurrencies, we believe digital currencies will have a role in the future. The extent of its impact will depend on the evolution of regulation and broader institutional adoption.”
So what do I think of all of this?
It really goes to show that blockchain technology, not just some new fad or technology but one with clear use cases that are being implemented and backed by one of the largest stock exchanges in the world. The fact that Nasdaq's CEO is confident and optimistic about blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, enough even to launch Bitcoin futures in this economic situation is a great sign.
I agree with Friedman when she says that how fast the industry will grow and which trajectory it will grow in will depend on two factors: regulation and institutional adoption. We saw yesterday that the Government sector is trying to incorporate the new technology into their laws, and I believe that as the state opens up to cryptocurrencies, institutions will also do the same. A lot of institutions in the fintech space are looking to blockchain at the moment, as we mentioned in the previous videos many banks like Westpac, are even working with Ripple to test blockchain technology for their money transfers. So really the variable that’s dictating the industry’s growth is regulations. But with large and trusted companies like Nasdaq pouring money into blockchain technology, it’s a great sign to show the government and state that this technology has a future and it’s here to stay.
So what are your thoughts on the situation guys?
Do you think Anna Friedman, the CEO of Nasdaq is right in betting so big on blockchain?
And do you think that slow and out-dated regulations are preventing the industry from growing quickly?
Let me know what you guys think in the comments below.
It’s Cindy with CryptoPig, catch you guys around!
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Disclaimer: Cryptopig content is written by a team of blockchain passionate people. We are not registered as investment advisors. Don’t take the information in this post as investment advice and make sure you do your own research before investing. Cryptocurrencies are a very risky investment, never invest more money than you can afford to lose.
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