The advent of blockchain and other digital ledger technologies cannot be ignored, and they will play a much greater role in the financial markets in the next five years, according to the heads of several of the world's commodities exchanges.
Matthew Chamberlain, chief executive officer of the London Metal Exchange, told Fastmarkets that the blockchain route for the LME would probably be pursued through partnerships rather than in a central attempt to digitize data."We think that digital ledger technology does have an application in the commodities market, and we think there are opportunities for us to partner with the market," he said during an exclusive interview with Fastmarkets on Tuesday March 12.Chamberlain noted that LMEShield, the exchange's central electronic register which provides global off-warrant commodity receipting, had not managed to gain the success for which the LME had hoped, "partly because it's seen as an LME-only solution," he said."But if we could go for a solution that worked with a consortium, and that perhaps used digital ledger technology to mean that there was no single actor who could see where all the...