The Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Market (HKEX) will begin collaborating with the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) on the issue of Blockchain technology implementation, Financial Times reports today, March 20.
ASX had announced in December of last year that it would begin using Blockchain to replace its current processing system for equity transactions, making it the first such exchange to do so. ASX partnered with consulting company for digital ledger technology, Digital Asset, for the transition.
Charles Li, the chief executive of HKEX, said at the Credit Suisse Asian Investment Conference that the two exchanges are “developing a much closer dialogue to understand what they’re doing, and sharing information…for sharing vendor relationships.”
According to Li, HKEX will use Blockchain for stock borrowing, lending, and some types of over-the-counter trades, adding that the exchange wants to use Blockchain “where nobody wants to spend the money to do anything, but where the exchange can come out and say let’s use this cheap technology to do something that doesn’t affect the central order book.”
The fast development of the technology had impeded previous plans of HKEX from two years ago to create a Blockchain-based private market to help small companies get funding. Lee told the Financial Times:
“Unfortunately this space changes so much that the vendors we chose… eventually evolved such that they’re not really useful to us, and we’re not interested in doing it ourselves.”
The Canadian Securities Exchange, an alternative stock exchange that began operating in 2004, also announced in February that they will be launching an Ethereum-based securities and clearing platform, allowing companies to raise capital with security tokens.