Even though Bitcoin has celebrated its 10 year anniversary earlier this week, the nascent industry of digital assets continues to be plagued by fraud, which is one of the main obstacles, hindering mass adoption. However, Nasdaq, the leading global stock exchange operator, is ready to lend a helping hand in stamping out fraud from the crypto industry.

Necessary technology is already in place

Citing an unpublished paper, Bloomberg reported that Nasdaq is ready to use its decades worth of experience in protecting traditional financial instruments, such as currencies or securities. The same tried and tested methods could be applied to virtual currencies and help regain the investor confidence.

A paper reads that “Regulators, brokers, and exchanges have surveillance teams that monitor activity constantly and advanced technologies to help capture and analyze abusive behaviors including pump-and-dump schemes, insider trading, wash trading as well as spoofing and layering.“

Gemini, a US-based crypto exchange founded by the Winklevoss twins, is already taking advantage of Nasdaq‘s market surveillance solutions. Reportedly, the stock exchange started getting requests from crypto companies a couple of years ago but the demand really jumped a year ago, as the cryptocurrency craze was soaring.

Nasdaq’s head of exchange and regulator surveillance Tony Sio claimed that “We’re now getting approached every week or two. We won’t work with all of these firms though since a lot of them are in a quite early stage or not reputable yet.“

Nasdaq is fond of digital currencies and blockchain

The second-largest stock exchange in the world seems to believe in the potential of crypto and distributed ledger technology. Earlier this week, the company has partnered with software giant Microsoft, to integrate its blockchain-based Azure technology into Nasdaq Financial Framework (NFF). Reports claim that NFF clients will be able to use multiple blockchains via a single interface.

Back in July, the company has implemented a blockchain solution to handle margin calls, at the time commenting that, “blockchain technology brings with it a huge potential to transform markets everywhere.“

The pro-crypto stance of Nasdaq‘s CEO Adena Friedman has been well documented and praised by the crypto community. She has stated that “cryptocurrency is the right next step in the space of currency“ and has also claimed that Nasdaq would be open to creating a crypto exchange further down the road, given the right regulatory framework.

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