The term ECN was used by the SEC to define, "any electronic system that widely disseminates to third parties orders entered therein by an exchange market maker or OTC market maker, and permits such orders to be executed against in whole or in part". The first ECN, the Instinet, was released in 1969 and provided an early application of the advances in computing. The spread of ECNs was encouraged through changes in regulatory law set forth by the SEC, and in 1975 the SEC adopted the Securities Acts Amendments of 1975, encouraging the "linking of all markets for qualified securities through communication and data processing facilities".
