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Fnord666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Online retailer Overstock.com has become the first publicly traded company to issue stock over the internet [wired.com], distributing more than 126,000 company shares via technology based on the bitcoin blockchain.

Through a subsidiary called tØ, the Salt Lake City-based Overstock has spent the past two years building the technology that facilitates this new way of trading financial securities. The online retailer and its free-thinking CEO, Patrick Byrne, view the blockchain as a way of significantly streamlining not only stock exchanges like the NASDAQ, but all sorts of other capital markets.

The blockchain is an online ledger controlled not by any one company or government agency, but by a global network of computers. With bitcoin, this ledger tracks the exchange of money, but it can also track anything else that holds value, including stocks, bonds, and other financial securities. The idea is that this technology can more accurately and inexpensively oversee financial trades while eliminating many of the middlemen and loopholes that characterize today's markets.

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