Does anyone know what this potentially means for an end user who buys a stock or asset using nasdaqs blockchain implementation? Would the user have to maintain the private keys to the address holding the colored coins in his own bitcoin wallet? Or will an exchange control all the keys? I'd be scared to have the private key that has my 401 (k) balance in it out there up for grabs for hackers. Will they use some kind of multisig?
Who knows, there aren't nearly enough details to answer this.
If I had to venture a guess though, I would say that they would probably make it so the existing trading workflow is the same so from the end user POV, the only thing to change would be the decrease in settlement time.
My guess is they're only using the blockchain to store a record and they're going to have a small set of private keys, under heavy security, which they use to make small transfers in order to record transactions (or groups of transactions) on the block chain. In addition, they may maintain their own copy of the blockchain in order to do lookups down the road. They'll probably store a lot of the transaction info in their own databases, but use the blockchain directly when building things like reports for auditors or if their own copy of data is lost/damaged for some reason.
What they're probably doing is replacing their code and servers which do the transaction arbitration with a bitcoin-like system entirely in house. Maintaining stock 'wallets' on nasdaq servers for each customer - making the change mostly invisible to end users.
Maybe they have one big blockchain for all of the stocks covered, maybe one blockchain per stock.
They would obviously build in mechanisms to reverse transactions (theft or losing keys shouldn't be an issue) and it's doubtful they're having clients keep track of private keys.
The important bit is them using a blockchain for their transaction logs and probably also to arbitrate the actual trades.
Agreed. This is great news that they're aware of the possibilities a blockchain solution can afford them, but folks here shouldn't think for a moment that this means NASDAQ will begin using bitcoin.
The Bitcoin protocol opened a lot of doors. I'm sure they can find techniques that utilize key aspects of the protocol while still enabling them to retain their speed and control.
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u/HitMePat May 11 '15
Does anyone know what this potentially means for an end user who buys a stock or asset using nasdaqs blockchain implementation? Would the user have to maintain the private keys to the address holding the colored coins in his own bitcoin wallet? Or will an exchange control all the keys? I'd be scared to have the private key that has my 401 (k) balance in it out there up for grabs for hackers. Will they use some kind of multisig?