The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is set to hold a public forum in mid-November during which blockchain and other financial technologies will be discussed.

Up for debate is the existing regulatory environment and the impact of technologies like digital currencies. According to the agency, which in recent years has pursued investigations into uses of the tech, the hope is to foster discussion among regulators, business owners and other industry stakeholders.

The SEC said:

"The proliferation of FinTech innovation has the potential to transform virtually every aspect of our nation’s financial markets. The panels will discuss issues such as blockchain technology, automated investment advice or robo-advisors, online marketplace lending and crowdfunding, and how they may impact investors."

No information yet has been published regarding the specific agenda or attendees. The event will be held on 14th November at the SEC's headquarters in Washington, DC.

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Multi-currency cash settlement system provider CLS is building a payments netting service that will enable cash trades on IBM's Fabric blockchain.

Unveiled today at the Sibos financial industry conference in Geneva, the service will mark the entrance into a new business category for New York-based CLS, which is historically known for providing settlement for traditional currency trades.

Early banks that have agreed to support the new blockchain platform include Bank of America, Bank of China (Hong Kong), Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley.

During a press event announcing the service, CLS Group CEO David Puth argued that the company's wide customer base and global presence gives it an edge in bringing a new blockchain-based solution to the market. In addition to the more than 60 members of its settlement service, CLS does business with 21,000 institutions worldwide, he said.

Puth told event attendees:

"We consider that a very rich audience to adopt this new service."

The project, currently underway, is expected to take 12 to 18 months to build.

Of the initial 14 participants, 12 come from the sell side, and two from buy-side, with a number of other clients close to announcing participation. CLS managing director Ram Komarraju said the offering will be built on a closed blockchain.

Traditionally, CLS has helped ensure counterparties who are conducting foreign exchange trades receive funds by simultaneously settling the payments on both sides using its payment-versus-payment settlement service, linked to a real-time gross settlement system.

But with CLS Netting, the new product will rely more heavily for security and efficiency on the private distributed ledger.

Driving demand

Though today's news marks the announcement of CLS's first internal product to be based on a blockchain, the firm isn't new to distributed ledgers.

CLS is a founding member of the Hyperledger initiative, along with fellow member IBM.

While IBM has been one of the larger code-contributors to the open-source project, CLS head of technology and operations, Tom Zschach, told CoinDesk his company has sought to serve a different purpose within the Hyperledger ranks.

Zschach said:

"Our role in that was not to contribute code, but to drive requirements for a financial market utility with the hope that what comes out at the other end of that is something that we can all use and people can benefit from our knowledge in running critical market infrastructure."

Zschach said he expects most of the business for the yet-to-be launched service to come through CLS's existing platform.

The road to blockchain

Founded in 2002, Continuous Linked Settlement helps its members ensure that all the parties in a multi-party currency exchange actually get what they want from the deal.

CLS is well positioned to bring a currency exchange product using blockchain to market. Last month, it received an average of 883,000 requests for transactions per day, for an average daily input value of $4.68tn.

To build on that, CLS announced earlier this year it would extend its business partnership with IBM to help mitigate risk on the platform. But it turns out, that partnership now extends to blockchain services as well.

IBM global business services manager Sarah Diamond said that the topic of blockchain emerged from earlier discussions between the two companies.

She explained:

"As we thought about the opportunities the industry is facing, blockchain became a key part of the discussion."

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A startup seeking to scale blockchain for enterprise use has raised €3m ($3.37m) in venture capital to do for databases what bitcoin's blockchain did for ledgers.

Led by Earlybird Ventures and featuring participation from Anthemis Group, RWE Ventures, innogy SE and Digital Currency Group, BigchainDB's Series A round is intended to help expand the company's staff and bolster its security.

Whereas traditional databases are centrally controlled, BigchainDB is working to build a database that has "blockchain characteristics" and that is owned by its users.

BigchainDB's co-founder and CEO Bruce Pon told CoinDesk:

"Blockchain is a way to give access to assets equally. You're still going to need intermediaries, but the access is equalized. They will never own your data like Google or Apple or Amazon."

The company currently employs 15 people at its Berlin headquarters, and will hire three new developers and a business development manager with the additional capital.

To date, most of the firm's existing revenue comes from one- to two-day consulting sessions and proof-of-concept builds with third-party companies, but ultimately, it hopes to generate revenue selling software licenses.

With the Series A raise, BigchainDB also cements a pivot that began shortly after it originally raised $2m in funding for an intellectual property product called Ascribe in early 2015. Since then, the company has rebranded, and though it still offers its Ascribe product for legacy users, no work is being done on the platform.

Still, Pon said Ascribe was an important stepping stone for the company, as it was its issues scaling the platform on the bitcoin blockchain that led the firm to search for a more scalable distributed ledger.

Pon describes the work his company has done since with its clients as "starting with existing database infrastructure and blockchainifying it."

In the case of his first client, provenance startup Everledger, that could mean setting up nodes with art galleries and helping them share art-ownership histories, or detecting fraud in the global diamond trade.

Though such work is still in its early phases, existing clients include investor RWE (which is currently working to build a "shared automous factory"); Capgemini (which is building a loyalty product); and Eris Industries (which is building an enterprise blockchain application stack).

To meet enterprise demands, Pon and his co-founders Trent and Masha McConaghy set about mixing blockchain features such as decentralized control, immutability and digital asset creation with more traditional database-features including a full-featured NoSQL query language and faster transaction rates.

But users don't have to be clients to download the software. Currently, anyone can spin-out a federation of nodes and set up their own network.

For those looking to join an existing open network, BigchainDB earlier this year launched the IPDB Foundation, a non-profit federation of about 15 nodes managed by non-profits like Archive.org, Open Media Foundation and a few for-profits such as Protocol Labs and ConsenSys.

According to CTO Trent McConaghy, the result of this work is a network that regularly runs at more than 100,000 transactions per second, and that has surpassed 1 million transactions.

McConagy said:

"We serve terabytes and even petabytes because that's what distributed big data databases do."

Disclosure: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which has an ownership stake in BigchainDB.

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The London police are investigating a digital currency scheme widely believed to be fraudulent.

OneCoin, promoted as a digital currency investment opportunity, was cited as a risk to consumers this week by the UK Financial Conduct Authority, one of several finance regulators in the country and the agency that has participated in the licensing of legitimate bitcoin and blockchain service providers.

Marketed as a digital currency similar to bitcoin, OneCoin has key differences such as an promotion-heavy pitch focused on selling investment packages and a centralized hub for exchange, storage and transaction logging. Critics have gone so far as to argue that OneCoin, as a currency, doesn't actually exist.

In statements, the FCA urged consumers who believe they have been scammed to contact the London police's fraud division.

The agency said:

"This firm is not authorized by us and we do not believe it is undertaking any activities that require our authorization. However, we are concerned about the potential risks this firm poses to UK consumers."

Notably, this is not the first time that OneCoin has drawn the ire of regulators.

In July, Belgian authorities warned consumers about investing in OneCoin, warning that "false and misleading" information was being disseminated by supporters.

Though unconfirmed, financial watchdogs in Germany and Bangladesh, among other likely countries, are believed to be investigating the issue further.

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A syndicated loan exchange trial utilizing blockchain technology being undertaken by a group of banks alongside startups R3 and Symbiont is moving ahead.

Announced during this week’s Sibos finance and technology conference in Geneva, Switzerland, the news sees the two startups, financial data provider Ipreo and Swiss financial services firm Credit Suisse (which organized the trial) completing the syndicated loan project's first phase.

The test wasn’t limited to just those companies, however. R3 members BBVA, Danske Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, Scotiabank, Société Générale, State Street, US Bank and Wells Fargo also took part in the initiative, as well as AllianceBernstein, Eaton Vance Management, KKR and Oak Hill Advisors.

The successful test is one of several trials announced by the R3 blockchain consortium in recent weeks. In the past month and a half, the group has pursued successful tests focused on the exchange of Treasury bonds, and trade finance.

In statements, those involved with the latest trial pointed to the test as a sign of the technology’s potential to cut costs and improve operational efficiency.

Emmanuel Aidoo, the head of Credit Suisse’s blockchain initiatives, said in a statement:

“This demonstration sets us on a path to increase efficiency and reduce costs, which will benefit banks and clients alike. By connecting a network of agent banks through blockchain, we can achieve faster and more certain settlements in the loan market.”

The trial is expected to continue through the end of the year.

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Two central securities depositories (CSDs) have agreed to collaborate on distributed ledger initiatives in a first-of-its-kind agreement globally.

Announced today, Strate and the National Securities Depository (NSD), the CSDs of South Africa and Russia, respectively, have agreed to collaborate to develop new solutions with the technology, starting first by focusing on extending NSD's past explorations into proxy voting.

As part of the agreement, Strate and NSD say they will share information related to the standardization and regulation of blockchain and distributed ledgers.

In statements, Eddie Astanin, chairman of the NSD’s executive board, spoke broadly about how he believes distributed ledgers could come to impact securities settlement and custody.

Astanin said:

"I think that post-trading may become the starting point of transition of the distributed ledger technology and blockchain from theory to practice."

The statements follow an April announcement from the NSD that it would trial a blockchain prototype for proxy voting, a move that positioned it as one of the more progressive firms globally on the tech.

Other initiatives have so far been announced by the DTCC in the US and the Korea Securities Depository in South Korea.

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