The Wall Street Bitcoin Alliance (WSBA), a trade advocacy group composed of financial market professionals, is looking to "guide and promote comprehensive adoption of digital currency and blockchain technology across financial markets."
The organization, which launched today, wants to educate and promote the usage of bitcoin and blockchain technology to financial professionals. Another part of the job will consist in engaging with regulators, policymakers and technology leaders to lead public discussions around digital currencies and blockchain technology, the organization said in a release.
According to Founder and Executive Director, Ron Quaranta:
"Bitcoin and blockchain technology and protocols represent a seismic shift in how financial markets, and all aspects of the global economy, will operate in the future."
Quaranta said his organization will be working to incorporate and adapt these "powerful technological advances" to the world of "Finance 2.0." He believes that in the long run, these innovations will lead to "more efficient markets, more cost-effective solutions for equity ownership, investment and trading, and ultimately greater value and wealth creation."
Quaranta is also the CEO of Digital Currency Labs, a financial technology and strategic advisory firm whose mission is to "bridge the gap between the emerging world of digital currencies and Wall Street."
In an interview with Bitcoinist, the executive defined "Finance 2.0" as what he believes to be "the future of global financial markets."
He explained:
"The ability to operate using blockchain technology and create trustless counterparty interactions on a global scale will reinvent how many long standing industries operate.
Finance 2.0 is the reinvention of capital allocation and movement on a global scale."
In addition to Quaranta, Executive Committee members include James Jalil, senior partner and head of the cryptocurrency practice at the law firm of Thompson Hine; Gil Luria, Managing Director at Wedbush Securities; and Christian Martin, Chief Executive Officer of TeraExchange, the world's first bitcoin derivatives exchange to receive approval from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
Tera Group, Inc., the owner of TeraExchange, LLC, announced last month it had entered into an agreement with MGT Capital Investments that would find the operator of TeraExchange's bitcoin derivatives platform, going public on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
What was then considered as a threat to our traditional financial system, is now perceived as a field of opportunities. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were not so long ago an exclusive playground for tech-savvies and libertarians, but have now caught the eye of Wall Street, which is certainly looking to make the best out of it.
In late-January 2015, Coinbase raised US$75 million in a funding round that included backers from large financial institutions such as USAA Bank and the New York Stock Exchange itself.
Cointelegraph reached out to the Wall Street Bitcoin Alliance for comments, but did not receive a response at the time of writing.
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