Swiss Startup Lykke Seeks To Disrupt The Retail Trading Market With Blockchain Tech

The founder and former chairman of Canadian foreign exchange company OANDA, Richard Olsen, has unveiled his most recent venture: a global marketplace for multiple assets and financial instrument built on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Dubbed Lykke, the company launched in late-September and seeks to provide every person on the planet with market access as well as the ability to issues his or her currencies.

Qualifying distributed ledger technology as “one of the greatest innovations in recent history,” Olsen said his company will use the Bitcoin blockchain as a global notary service to record and settle all types of transactions.

Lykke, a Swiss incorporated company, aims to address the outdated business processes, complexity, risks and high cost affiliated to the existing banking system.

“I want to build an efficient marketplace with immediate settlement,” Olsen told LeapRate in an interview.

“The distributed ledger technology pioneered by Bitcoin is ingenious. We use this infrastructure to build a trading platform, where a large number of market makers can market their USD, JPY, EUR coins, etc and quote prices. Users will be able trade at narrow spreads and have immediate settlement. They will be able to trade at literally any size and small increments. There will not be any price discrimination for small traders.”

With distributed ledger technology, the retail trading market is poised for disruption, Olsen added. He predicts “a complete transformation” by 2018.

Lykke marketplace and contest

To find the talents who will develop the Lykke platform, Olsen is hosting a global competition for the design of the architecture of the marketplace.

The Lykke Challenge is an open source code competition to build the fastest foreign exchange matching engine and settlement platform using the blockchain.

The competition runs in three stages with 21 prizes paid in Lykke coin varying from 500,000 Lykke coins (the equivalent of US$2,000) for the first stage, 1,000,000 Lykke coins (US$4,000) for the second stage, to 2,000,000 Lykke coins (US$8,000) for the final winner. Recipients can choose if they prefer Lykke coins or cash.

In November, Lykke rewarded three prizes to the three submissions that the company received for its second round. As the proposed solutions complemented each other, the company decided to skip the third phase of the design competition to directly move to the implementation of the marketplace as a joint team project.

In the beginning, Lykke’s marketplace will focus on foreign exchange but will expand to money market instrument, bonds, equities, etc.

Beyond the global marketplace, Lykke is proposing Lykke City, a community made of Lykke Citizens or Inhabitants.

To become a Lykke Citizen, a user needs to register on the website and provide KYC details including a mobile phone number, a selfie and a copy of ID or passport. He or she is then granted with a number of rights such as the ability to form teams and democratic autonomic organizations, to vote for projects, initiatives and submissions, as well as the ability to receive, send and trade Lykke coins.

Lykke Corp guarantees a minimum of US$0.004 per Lykke coin valid until the end of 2016.

Richard Olson will speak at the Zurich based nexussquared ‘Drink Up’ on January 18th, with a keynote on his project

Image credit: Bitcoin, Unsplash.