A recent collaboration between LAB577 and BCB Group culminated in the launch of the BLINC network, which is designed to facilitate instant settlement for fiat and digital currencies. Farzad Pezeshkpour, director LAB577, and Oliver Von Landsberg Sadie, CEO of BCB Group, joined Teana to discuss the details.

(29:42) “It certainly helps large organizations in the crypto space to move money where it needs to be much quicker than they could do through traditional payment rails. That superpower is also super useful for arbitraging gaps in the market, so where there are trading inefficiencies at venues which have different liquidity positions and therefore have slightly disconnected prices, a trader can quickly switch between these venues by moving money fast over BLINC. This is just not possible if you’re trying to do it over SEPA or SWIFT or any other traditional networks…So what BLINC is here to do is to fill a gap in the European market and eventually the Asian market as well to cover GBP, euro, Swiss francs, eventually USD too, whether independently or by partnership is TBD. But it’s really to solve those problems,” said BCB Group’s Von Landsberg Sadie, adding that the type of clients they’re looking at are exchanges, market makers, traders and funds as well as retail and commercial services.

Teana asked Lab577’s Pezeshkpour about the sales process to crack into larger and less agile organizations, in response to which he said:

(39:05) “So definitely we are seeing traction by some significant market participants, some of which are public already…and others who are just examining the potential and are talking to clients like us to see what’s possible. We are working really hard with all of those individuals and parties there, we’ve got a few engagements already….
(41:21) Some institutions that we’ve been working with are looking at saying well okay we don’t want to do interbank transfers but we are geographically located all around the world. We have entities in the US, in the Netherlands, in the UK and can we have an internet [block?] for ourselves just so that we can settle our books at the end of the day without having the complexities of international payments and so on.”

Teana also asked them about other critical problems that similar collaboration could solve, in response to which BCB Group’s Von Landsberg Sadie said:

(42:26) “I’m going to put a regulatory lens on because it’s helpful to think of markets through a regulatory lens because that’s what’s ultimately going to shape what really takes hold in the next few years.” He pointed to the market efficiency role of regulators and consumer protection as the first two pillars, adding: “I think the third and biggest opportunity ahead is the representation of equities and other real world assets on the blockchain because that’s where I think DASL will truly shine.”