Nasdaq made its largest investment in enterprise blockchain, leading a $20 million Series B in Symbiont, a startup working to bring new kinds of assets that are custodied by blockchain to mainstream adoption.

one of its biggest competitors, the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), recently announced it was opening its own cryptocurrency exchange, Bakkt, after making its own batch of exploratory blockchain investments. Showing a possible path forward for Nasdaq, which has 3,400 companies listed on its exchanges.

Instead of being disinter-mediated by blockchain technology, which like bitcoin offers the potential for counter parties to move value without a trusted third party, exchanges like Nasdaq and others are partnering with those companies to study the technology and, increasingly, to use it.

As part of today’s investment, Nasdaq is also announcing a commercial integration that could see the company, which runs 26 exchanges for equities, options, bonds, derivatives and commodities in the United States, Scandinavia, the Baltic region, Armenia, and others, expand into new areas.