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By Jemima Kelly
LONDON, Oct 28 (Reuters) - Japan's Mizuho Bank,Italy's UniCredit and Stockholm-based Nordea have joined a global consortium of banks led by financial techfirm R3 that is working on a framework for using blockchaintechnology in markets, the firm said on Wednesday.
Most of the world's biggest banks, with the exception ofChinese lenders, have now signed up to the initiative. Itrepresents the first time banks have collaborated on how thetechnology that underpins bitcoin, a controversial, web-based"cryptocurrency", can be used in finance.
The three banks announced on Wednesday join 22 others,including JPMorgan, HSBC and Citi, takingthe total to 25.
"We have been inundated with interest in this project frombanks across the world since launching with an initial nineinstitutions just over a month ago," said New York-based R3'sCEO David Rutter, formerly CEO of electronic trading at ICAP,one of the world's largest interdealer brokers.
The blockchain works as a huge, decentralised ledger ofevery bitcoin transaction ever made, which is verified andshared by a global network of computers and therefore isvirtually tamper-proof. The Bank of England has a team dedicatedto it and calls it a "key technological innovation". (Reporting by Jemima Kelly; editing by Jason Neely)
