Finance’s interest in the blockchain has been piqued – with the likes of Nasdaq, UBS and former JP Morgan commodities chief Blythe Masters among the early converts to its potential. But plans to embrace the technology could hit an early snag: almost nobody knows how to use it.

US stock exchange Nasdaq is among those to have announced publicly its intention to begin testing the ledger technology, which underpins the cryptocurrency bitcoin. Last week it posted a job advertisement on LinkedIn for software engineers with blockchain expertise to work on its private markets platform.