Big Blue appears to have developed an appetite for fintech startups. Two weeks after picking up Germany’s IRIS Analytics GmbH for its fraud detection technology, the company has contributed to a $60 million funding round in Digital Asset Holdings LLC. The capital infusion adds its name to a star-studded investor roster that also includes consulting powerhouse Accenture PLC and more than ten major financial institutions.

Two, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and the Australian Securities Exchange, have signed deals with the startup to incorporate its blockchain technology into their trading systems. The companies are looking to harness the software in order to reduce the amount of time it takes to clear stock transactions, a process that usually completes days or even weeks after the initial purchase. Digital Asset has shared few details about exactly how it’s approaching the challenge to date, but the shroud of secrecy surrounding its software is slowly starting to lift.

The startup recently announced that it’s contributed much of the underlying source-code to the Linux Foundation in support of a new industry initiative to develop a free blockchain framework for the financial services industry. The project was started two months ago by none other than IBM, which is cementing its leadership position with the contribution to Digital Asset’s latest funding round. Many of its other backers are participating in the project too, although they’re not keeping all of their eggs in one basket. Citigroup Inc., for instance, joined a $30 million investment in Chain.com Inc. a few months ago.

IBM will likely follow a similar route in its quest to capitalize on the meteoric rise of the blockchain model. The company might even go a step further and acquire a few of Digital Asset’s peers in order to give potential customers a choice of implementations. Now that financial institutions are starting to actively adopt the technology, nothing is out of the question.

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