The University of Sydney claims its blockchain technology is faster than Visa’s transaction processing system. The university says its Red Belly Blockchain can process 660 000 transactions per second on 300 machines in one data centre, compared to Visa’s 56 000 transactions per second and Bitcoin’s seven (that’s seven with no noughts).

Project chief Vincent Gramoli says the RBBC works when using machines on different continents, which makes it unique. The next step is to make it available “to all Internet users.”  CMM asked what this meant and was told by a university spokesperson that “the researchers are exploring different options at the moment.” Good-oh, but the big question remains will the measure of blockchain processing speeds now be the snake?