On November 19, Goldman Sachs submitted a patent application that details the inner workings of “SETLcoin”. A system of digital currency tokens that will facilitate instant securities settlement using distributed ledger technology. The SETLcoin tokens essentially function just like colored coins, where tokens can be assigned specific attributes and values. In the case of SETLcoin, a token can be used to represent a particular stock/company.

The application goes into more detail:

“An SETLcoin wallet or transaction can house a single security, as described above, or multiple denominations of the same security (eg, 1 IBM-S SETLcoin valued at 100 IBM shares). SETLcoin wallets or transactions may also house multiple securities (eg, 1 IBM-S SETLcoin and 2 GOOG-S SETLcoins).”

SETLcoins will also be convertible to other digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Litecoin. The software wallet powering the exchange of SETLcoins will act as a sort of savings/trading account. Trades between parties are mediated by a “coordinator node” system. The application goes into more little more detail regarding the technical details of the process:

“The described technology, in various embodiments, implements an atomic commitment protocol, such as a two-phase commitment protocol, to ensure that both traders are ready to send their respective transaction messages. A coordinator of the two-phase commitment is, in some embodiments, a trusted node, for example a node that both traders mutually agree to have act as coordinator (including each other).”

Goldman Sachs is no stranger to the digital currency space. The investment bank participated in Circle’s $50 million funding round in April.

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