U.S. soybeans cargo to China traded using blockchain
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Louis Dreyfus, Shandong Bohi Industry, ING, Societe Generale and ABN Amro took part in the trade where the sales contract, letter of credit and certificates were digitalised on the Easy Trading Connect (ETC) platform.
“We noticed very significant efficiency gains... far beyond what we expected,” Robert Serpollet, global head of trade operations at Louis Dreyfus, said, adding that the time spent on processing documents and data had been reduced five-fold.
Blockchain, which first emerged as the system underpinning cryptocurrency bitcoin, is a distributed record of transactions that is maintained by a network of computers on the internet.
Blockchain technology has been used successfully to conduct trade in other markets such as oil. ■