Blockchain startup Digital Asset receives $52 million in Series A funding and will enter the Australian stock market

Digital Asset Holdings, the blockchain startup led by former JPMorgan Chase executive Blythe Masters, has raised $52 million in Series A funding and won a contract from the Australian Securities Exchange, Bloomberg reported.

The deal with the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) is the most ambitious attempt to prove the distributed ledger system. ASX agreed to invest A$14.9 million (about $10.5 million), and other investors include JPMorgan Chase, CME Group, ICAP Plc, Accenture, Deutsche Börse, Citigroup, BNP Paribas, Broadridge Financial Solutions, PNC Financial Services Group, Santander Bank, etc. According to people familiar with the matter, this round of financing was oversubscribed and the current valuation of the New York startup is $200 million.

Digital Asset is one of a dozen startups competing in the blockchain market. Digital Asset aims to allow all participants to trade assets in real time on the same database. Currently, the Australian Securities Exchange aims to reduce settlement time to minutes.

“Right now, we can trade shares in 150 microseconds and then take two days to settle. That doesn’t make sense,” ASX chief executive Elmer Funke Kupper said in an interview. “A retail investor in Australia should be able to sell their shares and go to the nearest ATM and get cash.”

A year ago, the ASX said it would replace all of its core technology systems. Digital Asset beat out 400 applicants to win the ASX contract. Funke Kupper said the Australian Stock Exchange invested about $10 million in Digital Asset.

“The minute we started thinking about it, we realized this was bigger than just replacing back-office systems,” he said. “This was the first opportunity in 20 years to reinvent the market, and we couldn’t miss it.”

Emerging technologies

We've been talking about how blockchain, or distributed ledger technology, could change financial markets for about a year, and 2016 looks like the year those ideas will be put to the test. Earlier this week, R3, a blockchain company backed by 42 banks, launched its first blockchain experiment with 11 banks and said it had successfully simulated a digital asset trade on a proprietary network. Overstock.com Inc. is close to launching the first securities trading system using blockchain, while Nasdaq Inc. recently said it completed and recorded the first trade in private securities using the technology.

Additionally, Digital Asset’s board of directors will grow to nine members, with the addition of four new members from BNP Paribas, Deutsche Börse, JPMorgan Chase, and DTCC.

Original article: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-21/blythe-masters-firm-raises-cash-wins-australian-exchange-deal
By Matthew Leising
Compilation: Overnight porridge
Source (translation): Babbitt Information (http://www.8btc.com/digital-asset-520m)