The use of distributed ledger technology in the US equity markets could be a viable option, a DTCC benchmark study suggests, with the tech proving that it can process more than 100 million trades a day.
The study, which was conducted by Accenture with support from Digital Asset and R3, proved that DLT can perform at levels necessary to process an entire trading day’s volume at peak rates, which equates to 115,000,000 daily trades, or 6300 trades per second for five continuous hours.
The exercise demonstrates a significant upgrade on public blockchains supporting cryptocurrencies, which operate at single or double digit per second performance.
Murray Pozmanter, head, clearing agency services, DTCC, says: "As an early adopter of DLT, we are encouraged by the results of the study because they prove that the technology’s performance can scale to meet the needs of markets of different sizes and maturity."
The DTCC is keen not to jump the gun, noting that more work is needed to determine of DLT can also meet the resiliency, security, operational needs and regulatory requirements of its existing clearance and settlement system.
However, the study represents a major advance. Last year, DTCC CEO Mike Bodson poured cold water on some of the wilder hopes of DLT cheerleaders, arguing that it is far from ready for primetime because it "simply doesn't have the scale or capacity to match the robust processing engines that underpin the US capital markets today".