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News

Forbes: The Fintech 50: The Complete List

Just as Amazon changed the way we shop and Apple reinvented the music biz, digital disruption is going to soon affect every aspect of your money: how you earn it, save it, invest it and spend it. You'll want to keep close tabs on the 50 companies listed here. They are the small firms destined to have a big impact on your financial future and possibly upend your portfolio.

FT: Blockchain initiative backed by nine large investment banks

Nine of the largest investment banks, including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Credit Suisse, are planning to develop common standards for blockchain technology in an effort to broaden its use across financial services.

The group are looking to channel data, ideas and financial backing to a start-up called R3CEV, a New York-based group of trading and technology executives.

Coindesk: Report Highlights 'Areas of Concern' in Ripple Protocol Design

A report commissioned by secretive distributed ledger consulting group R3CEV and authored by bitcoin developer Peter Todd has raised questions about the ability of the Ripple protocol to serve the needs of global financial institutions in its current iteration...While concerns were raised, however, the report was viewed by some contributors as "the first serious, non-malicious attempt at pointing out perceived weaknesses in the system".

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Coindesk: Inside R3CEV's Plot to Bring Distributed Ledgers to Wall Street

Originally published July 21st, 2015

About a year ago, R3CEV founder David Rutter and partner Todd McDonald traveled to California to survey the growing landscape of digital currency startups for potential investment opportunities. After days of meeting with numerous companies – in addition to back-and-forth trips on the highway – Rutter says that he had a moment of deja vu.
“I had seen it before where a lot of money – a lot of California-based venture money – was being thrown at PowerPoints and half-baked ideas about how this new technology was going to change finance as we know it," he recalled.

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Bloomberg: LiquidityEdge Wants to Help Little Guy in U.S. Treasuries Market

Originally published June 24, 2015

The firm plans to allow dealers and investors to stream live prices to counterparts whose identities are known to each other in order to provide a better trading environment, Rutter said in an interview.
“There’s an under-served part of the market such as regional dealers and smaller brokers that find it very expensive and difficult to keep up technologically with larger dealers and faster traders,” said Rutter, who was chief executive officer of ICAP’s electronic broking unit. “To compete effectively on BrokerTec or ESpeed, these smaller brokers have to make a very significant investment.”

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NYT: Bitcoin Technology Piques Wall Street Interest

Originally published August 28th, 2015

One of the most advanced of those conversations has been coordinated by a start-up known as R3Cev that is led by a former Wall Street executive, David E. Rutter. R3Cev has put together models for how banks could trade foreign currencies on a communally maintained spreadsheet like the blockchain, according to people briefed on the project. It was R3Cev that convened the April meeting at Bank of America, which was attended by more than 75 people from 15 financial institutions, these people said.

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