VISA, Telecom giant Orange, Citi, Nasdaq have invested $30 Million in Bitcoin-Related Startup – Chain.com. Interestingly Wall Street is putting money behind a technology it originally dismissed as a fad.
Other investors include Capital One, Fiserv. Forbes estimates that this series B round of funding brings the San Francisco-based company’s valuation to nearly $150 million.
According to WSJ, “These financial companies don’t have any interest in using the actual currency. But they see the “blockchain” technology that lets Bitcoin users instantaneously make and record transactions as a potential replacement for what they say is a cumbersome, costly and less-secure process.”
Vast bureaucracies exist inside banks and at third-party firms to verify and process the buying and selling of everything from foreign currencies to stocks.
The blockchain is a record of every transaction ever made using Bitcoin. But rather than being held in a central database or institution, it is spread out over a network of independent computers and verified continuously by participants in the network instead of a central authority. Other blockchains have been created unrelated to Bitcoin.
Visa’s executive vice president of innovation and strategic partnerships Jim McCarthy said that it was interested in exploring the technology particularly for payments outside of retail point-of-sale, an area that the company already covers well.
It is thought that the technology might make it possible for a stock or other asset to change owners in the blink of an eye, instead of the roughly three days and several steps of intermediaries it takes now.
