Question
Is the software support provided by GBST Holdings likely to be impacted by either the change in the rules to the stock market operations re ASX or the potential development of block chain technology.
Graham Goulding Answer
Hi Graham,
I wish I had an answer, but the truth is that at this stage the company executives don’t seem to have much idea, nor do many of the techies I’ve spoken to, so it’s hard to add much to the debate. There’s a lot about block chain online, if you fancy wading through some of it – I’ve read quite a lot of it, though, and I have to admit that I’m only slightly the wiser for it.
There are a couple of points to bear in mind. First of all, there are questions about the scalability of the technology. Bitcoin can only manage 7 transactions a second. Different implementations could no doubt increase that – there’s debate about how high it might go, but there will still be limits. Second, while it’s easy to imagine individual implementations of blockchain – like a cryptocurrency or perhaps the trading of individual stocks on a market – getting rid of billing companies and records-based companies such as GBST would presumably require different implementations to talk to each other – eg a bank account block chain talking to a sharemarket block chain to settle a share purchase – and it seems to me that this is likely to take a lot more time and development. The nirvana of having everything talk to everything, with no need for any middlemen looks like being a long way off.
GBST’s new chief executive Rob De Dominicis noted the ASX’s block chain trial in a conference call following the interim result, but seemed pretty relaxed about it. If the trial […]
