Digital Asset Holdings acquires Wall Street queen Sallie Krawcheck

Rage Commentary : Sallie Krawcheck has been regarded as the most influential woman on Wall Street for more than a decade and is known as the Queen of Wall Street. She has always been recognized by institutional investors as the No. 1 best analyst and led all staff of Sanford Bernstein Research to strive for the best on Wall Street. She was appointed Chairman and CEO of Sanford Bernstein in June 2001. This former Wall Street CEO has held important positions at Smith Barney, Merrill Lynch, and Sanford Bernstein. She is known for her ability to turn around declining large companies and was once described as the most powerful woman on Wall Street.

Translation: Krystal

On Tuesday, Sallie Krawcheck, a former executive at Citigroup and Bank of America, announced that she has officially joined the board of directors of Digital Asset Holdings LLC, a New York-based company focused on blockchain technology in the financial services industry, dedicated to transforming financial transactions.

According to an official statement from Digital Asset Holdings, Krawcheck currently also serves as the CEO of Ellevest (a digital investment platform launched this year for women), and she is also one of the co-founders of the platform.

Digital Asset Holdings has hired two of Wall Street’s most high-profile women. Sallie Krawcheck was a senior executive at Bank of America Wealth Management, while Digital Asset Holdings CEO Blythe Masters once ran JPMorgan Chase’s commodities business and helped create the credit default swap mechanism.

Digital Asset has raised more than $60 million from banks and other investors, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., CME Group Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and International Business Machines Corp.

The company’s mission is to dramatically speed up and simplify transaction record keeping by using blockchain technology. Currently, stock exchanges rely on central authorities to oversee cash stock transfers, but digital assets aim to link all parties involved in the process together in the same database, so that asset flows can be real-time, rather than the days currently measured.

Digital Asset Holdings CEO: Blythe Masters

Masters said in a statement:

“We are honored to have Sallie join us. She has a proven track record as both an industry executive and an entrepreneur. Her unique experience will be a tremendous asset to us as we build and expand our business.”

Distributed ledgers still face challenges on their road to success. Fierce competitors need to work together. Regulatory barriers can only stifle or drastically slow progress. While cross-border payment networks based on distributed ledgers could save banks money, they would also cost them revenue in other parts of their business. Another challenge is how to integrate this emerging technology into existing systems.

Digital Asset is one of a dozen startups vying to prove that blockchain can be applied to financial markets. In January, blockchain startup R3, which has the backing of more than 40 banks, successfully simulated a digital asset trade based on a private network of 11 members. Overstock.com Inc. is about to become the first securities trading system to use blockchain technology. Recently, Nasdaq said it successfully completed and recorded its first private securities transaction using the technology.

Digital Asset has been awarded a contract to upgrade trade settlement technology for the Australian Stock Exchange — undoubtedly the most significant sign yet of blockchain’s bright future in financial markets.