Australian Stock Exchange scraps blockchain-based core replacement after 5 years

Some more details here https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/they-were-b...

The promise was there:

"In an ideal world, blockchain might compress that T+2 settlement time to real time by allowing payments and ownership records to move simultaneously. A lot of the reconciliation and administrative processes taking place all day in broker and investor offices could be streamlined if everyone knew everything about an equity simultaneously."

But it seems part of the problem is vested interests and not technical.

"At the heart of ASX’s spectacular failure was the unsettling nature of innovation to all those market intermediaries: what the ASX saw as potential savings, registries and other companies profiting handsomely from clipping the tickets on trading and company actions saw as an attack on their revenue bases. Australian investors pay about $1 billion each year for registry services."

This was the one project that made me think I should revisit my opinion that “blockchain is a solution in search of a problem”. I thought that the ASX would know better than me what’s needed to build a clearing and settlements platform.

Nope, looks like I was right all along.

The Australian Securities Exchange has officially written off the long-awaited technology overhaul designed to replace its core trading service with a blockchain-based system at a cost of around $255 million.