Two UK-based organisations, Innovate Finance and Hartree, in collaboration with IBM and with the support of the UK government open a lab to research the public ledger technology behind the bitcoin digital currency. The founders hope to move the blockchain one step closer to mass adoption.



Innovate Finance is a London-based non-profit membership organisation that fosters FinTech development in the UK. The members include Barclays, HSBC, Silicon Valley Bank, Nutmeg, Transferwise, and a bitcoin start-up GoCoin. The Hartree Centre is backed with 37.5 million GBP investment from the UK government Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). It presents a computing and data analysis research data obtained in association with IBM.

The Innovate Finance lab will open in October. It will leverage the power of Hartree’s high-performance computing (HPC) solutions to explore the blockchain technology. The Innovate Finance experts hope to develop new blockchain-based solutions to be adopted by financial institutions for the benefit of the market players, customers, and regulators. The first set of prototype use cases will be developed by the end of the year. The researchers will experiment with the new technologies and test the developed use cases.

“This is a formidable partnership built on expertise and a hunger to develop innovations that can have a meaningful and sustainable impact on the financial services sector and the UK economy. The Hartree Centre is very excited about this new initiative and look forward to working closely with Innovate Finance members to learn from the knowledge they bring. We hope to harness the power of our world class computing systems,” David Moss, Advanced Technology Solutions Manager at the Hartree Centre, said.

Aliona Chapel