Digital cash can prevent accidents on the $19 trillion FX highway

CLS is good at preventing mishaps in the foreign-exchange market. The trouble is, it handles only 18 major currencies

On any given day, you’ll find $19 trillion of payment obligations dotting the busy highway of global finance, waiting to be settled.

These claims, all of which result from foreign-exchange trades, mostly reach their destinations without a glitch. But, blockchain evangelists claim, that is more luck than planning: Almost half of this amount remains just as exposed to accidents as it did on a day half-a-century ago when liquidators showed up unannounced at a midsize German bank.

By the time authorities closed down Cologne-based Bankhaus Herstatt on the afternoon of June 26, 1974, it had collected all the deutsche marks it was