Blockchain securities management startup Symbiont has raised a $1.25 million seed round that included a number of high-profile individual investors.

The list includes Duncan Niederauer, former CEO of the NYSE Euronext; Matt Andresen, founder of the Island ECN and trading head at Citadel; Getco, LLC founders Dan Tierney and Stephen Schuler through Wicklow Capital; Scott Carmilani, chairman and CEO of Allied World Assurance Company; and Celeridem FinTech Fund.

Founded by ex-employees of Overstock.com, Inc.’s Medici project, Symbiont is using the Bitcoin Blockchain to eliminate inefficiencies and opaqueness that have developed on Wall Street by utilizing the speed and security offered by the use of the Blockchain as a distributed ledger.

The company claims that its implementation of the Blockchain in these markets will enable them to be faster, more efficient, and exhibit lower costs with increased liquidity, transparency and security.

“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to leverage this previously unimaginable technology for the greater good of investors, financial institutions and global financial markets,” Co-founder and CEO of Symbiont Mark Smith said in a statement. “The Blockchain not only has the potential to democratize markets but to drive down the cost of doing business across all sectors.”

Strength in P2P

The pitch of the company is appealing: By offering a decentralized and distributed peer-to-peer financial network, its Blockchain-powered system would allow institutional and retail users to issue, trade and process a range of financial instruments far more efficiently than they do today, and further — unlike current restrictions within specific markets — globally through a unified distributed standard.

As we’ve reported here countless times recently, interest in implementation of the Blockchain in ledger management is quickly spreading in various sectors.

While Symbiont is looking at actual financial trades, banks are looking at Blockchain implementation for money transfers. There’s one startup who’s implementing the Blockchain for land title management, and even this week Overstock has said it would be issuing a $25 million bond offering that will be managed solely via Blockchain implementation.

There’s even a close competitor to Symbiont in the form of Mirror, which raised $8.8 million Series A last week; however, whereas Symbiont is trying to work within the financial system, Mirror is looking to provide alternatives to it.

Skeptics may argue that Bitcoin has a dubious future, but if nothing else ever comes from Bitcoin, the Blockchain that runs it has the potential to change the world.

Symbiont noted that it intended to raise Series A funding in the third quarter.

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