Nasdaq Confirms Its Long Interest In Crypto & Blockchain With A New Funding Round

In today’s crypto news, we have Nasdaq as a leader in a new $20 million Series B round of funding in the capital market blockchain technology company Symbiont that poses as one of the biggest crypto plays by Nasdaq to date.

This also comes right after the CEO of Nasdaq, Adena Friedman, gave further clues to the company’s commitment to cryptocurrency and blockchain adoption earlier this year – with that confirming that a possible platform for issuance and trading of tokenized securities might be on its way.

Led by Nasdaq Ventures, the round of funding to the 2015 blockchain startup Symbiont is joined by Citi Ventures, Galaxy Digital and Raptor Group. Currently, Symbiont describes Nasdaq as “an anchor partner” which will benefit from developing apps on its “Assembly” enterprise blockchain and smart contract platform.

As a recent press release showed:

“Assembly provides the opportunity for new participants to enter the digital asset market and offers existing participants a superior infrastructure on which to build the future of financial markets.”

With this, Nasdaq is aiming to use the platform to “explore new business opportunities” with clients interested in smart contract and tokenization solutions. Meanwhile, the Head of Nasdaq Ventures said that its investments will “help build our future market infrastructure used by more than 100 marketplaces around the world.”

What’s interesting is the fact that Nasdaq will also support a “unique institutional” application of blockchain that will “Include the integration of Symbiont’s enterprise blockchain and smart contract platform into the Nasdaq Financial Framework,” as the release said.

We are excited to welcome @SymbiontIO, a market-leading platform for institutional applications of #blockchain technology, to @Nasdaq Ventures. https://t.co/heqfd0JVcy

— Nasdaq Tech (@NasdaqTech) January 23, 2019