Thomson Reuters is the latest to join this major blockchain consortium
Thomson Reuters is the latest financial institution to join one of the major consortiums working on blockchain technology, joining several of the world's biggest banks.
The global firm is joining R3, the group which is spearheading efforts to standardise blockchain technology and now counts more than 40 members, including Barclays, HSBC and Goldman Sachs.
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"Thomson Reuters has been collaborating with customers on blockchain and distributed ledger initiatives and powerful proof-of-concept projects for some time now,” said Thomson Reuters' customer solutions managing director Mark Rodrigues.
“The opportunities afforded by this emerging technology are enormously exciting for us and for our customers, and our goal with R3 is to collaborate together with the consortium and our customers in these key industry discussions as we shape the future of financial transactions.”
Set up last year, R3 has attracted organisations beyond the big UK and US banks, adding its first institutions in Africa and China this year, with Absa Bank and insurer Ping An.
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“Our network of members continues to grow and diversify at a rapid rate, and the addition of a major market data and technology provider is another significant milestone for R3,” said the group's chief executive David Rutter.
“Distributed and shared ledger-based solutions hold the potential to transform the technology used by financial market participants to execute trades and access market data, and Thomson Reuters’ insight and expertise in this field will be an invaluable asset in our collaborative lab environment.”
Thomson Reuters is also experimenting with Ethereum, a distributed ledger for smart contracts on which the cryptocurrency of the same name is based, while it invested in blockchain startup Fluent/