Goldman Begins Trading on JPMorgan’s Repo Blockchain Network

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has joined the blockchain-based network created by JPMorgan Chase & Co. for repurchase agreements that use smart contracts and a digitized version of the U.S. dollar.

Its first trade came on June 17, when it swapped a tokenized version of a U.S. Treasury bond for JPMCoin, JPMorgan’s internal representation of a digital dollar, according to Mathew McDermott, global head of digital assets for Goldman’s global markets division. He declined to give the value of the trade.

“We see this as a pivotal moment for the digitization of transactional activity,” McDermott said Tuesday in an interview. Unlike in the traditional repo market, the exact amount of time the banks took to complete the transaction was quantifiable. In this case, it was 3 hours and 5 minutes.

Knowing the precise time is a big step up from the current market, as is the way the collateral and cash are interchanged simultaneously and immediately, McDermott said.

“We pay interest per minute,” he said. “We firmly think this will change the nature of the intraday marketplace.”

JPMorgan created the new repo market using its version of the Ethereum blockchain, with its first trades in December. It has since gone on to trade more than $1 billion a day through its Onyx blockchain platform.

The firm is speaking with more than 10 banking and investing clients about joining the repo network, according to spokeswoman Jessica Francisco. Bank of New York Mellon Corp. served as the custody agent for the trades.

Transactions in the $2.4 trillion repo market raise cash overnight or for a few days, but are difficult to arrange within the same trading day. The digitized upgrade provides that ability to JPMorgan, using so-called smart contracts on an Ethereum-based blockchain that allow cash and Treasuries to be returned instantaneously.

Wall Street began experimenting with blockchain about five years ago. In addition to JPMorgan, a blockchain pioneer among Wall Street banks, Paxos Trust Co. is using it to settle some equity trades in near-real-time. Arca is offering digital shares in a U.S. Treasury fund, showing that distributed-ledger technology can help streamline finance.

McDermott said Goldman Sachs’s participation in the JPMorgan market fits in broadly with how it’s thinking about enterprise blockchain, a system where all participants are known to one another.

“There’s the growing focus on the potential of this technology,” he said. Then he added something rarely heard from rival bankers: “It’s been great working with JPMorgan and BNY on this.”