In the past six months, mass media giant Thomson Reuters, perhaps best known for the Reuters international news agency, has made two significant moves in the blockchain sector. More publicly known is news in late March that the firm had begun contributing to the Hyperledger project, an open-source blockchain initiative led by the Linux Foundation. The project boasts support from high-profile technology and financial firms as well as a number of blockchain-focused startups, and has attracted significant attention for its bid to bring the tech to big businesses.
Less publicized was its investment in Fluent , a startup looking to use permissioned blockchains for supply chain applications. The move was a strategic one, the company said at the time , indicating that it saw possible applications for the firm’s technology across its global string of business units.
Among those units, Scott Manuel, vice president and head of product management for Thomson Reuters says, are the company’s tax accounting and legal research businesses.
Manuel said that while the company’s financial data delivery and trading product divisions are looking at applications in line with major financial institutions, particularly exchanges and clearing houses, it’s on the legal side that the firm is seeing significant interest in blockchain.
He told CoinDesk: "Our legal customers … are very excited about the potential of smart contracts, what can smart contracts do, what can they allow in the blockchain world. As most of our legal customers also do legal work with financial services, those clients are all interested in how blockchain can apply." Global applications
Manuel, whose background lies in computer science, says he remembers reading a 2011 New Yorker article that offered an early take on the pseudonymous creator of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. It was an experience that he says was a factor as Thomson Reuters beginning a process […]
