Further evidence has emerged that French investment banks are exploring the potential of blockchain technology in the capital markets.
France's biggest bank, BNP Paribas, is investigating the distributed ledger and "how it can be applied to post trade processes to make things faster and potentially cheaper," a spokesperson has confirmed, but stresses "it's all very much projects and it's all in testing. It's nothing live."
The news follows comments made earlier this month by an analyst in the bank's Securities Services division that blockchain technology has the potential to completely upend post-trade infrastructure in the capital markets.
Writing in the bank's internal publication, Johann Palychata stated that by allowing all market participants' direct access to clearing and settlement infrastructure, many industry players could be left redundant.
Meanwhile, Société Générale, France's third biggest bank, is looking to appoint an IT developer familiar with blockchain, bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, reports the bitcoin news site CoinDesk.
The job advert, posted earlier this month, is for a 12 month position within the London-based IT team for the bank's Global Banking and Investor Solutions department and will involve working on the trading floor.
The roles and responsibilities for the job will include "developing proof of concepts in any language used in cryptocurrency protocols" and "engineering ways of gathering information on what's really happening in the cryptocurrency world".