The Impact and Potential of Blockchain on the Securities Transaction Lifecycle*
This paper reports the outcome of a series of interviews and focus group meetings with professionals working in post-trade processing and the provision of mutual distributed ledger services. The objective was to elicit and document views on three research hypotheses about the potential impact of mutual distributed ledger technology (âblockchainâ) on post-trade processing global securities markets.
Distributed ledger technologies in securities post-trading
This paper analyses the main features of DLTs that could influence their adoption by financial institutions and discusses how use of these technologies could affect the European post-trade market for securities.
Eurosystem’s vision for the future of Europe’s financial market infrastructure
The launch of TARGET2-Securities (T2S) as a new platform for securities settlement provides an ideal opportunity for the Eurosystem to develop a vision for evolving its market infrastructure services.
Framework for Securities Regulation of Cryptocurrencies
This report presents a framework for securities regulation of cryptocurrenciesâe.g. Bitcoin and derivative projects or âalt-coins.â The framework is based on the Howey test for an investment contract as well as the underlying policy goals of securities regulation. We find that several key variables within the software of a cryptocurrency and the community that runs and maintains that software are indicative of investor or user risk. These variables are explained in depth and mapped to the four prongs of the Howey test in order to create a framework for determining when a cryptocurrency resembles a security and might therefore be regulated as such. We find that larger, more decentralized cryptocurrenciesâe.g. Bitcoinâ pegged cryptocurrenciesâi.e. sidechainsâas well as distributed computing platformsâe.g. Ethereumâdo not easily fit the definition of a security and also do not present the sort of consumer risk best addressed through securities regulation. We do find, however, that some smaller, questionably marketed or designed cryptocurrencies may indeed fit that definition.