Germany’s No. 2 Exchange Launches Bitcoin Spot Trading

Exchange Boerse Stuttgart, Germany’s second-largest stock exchange, has opened a regulated trading venue for digital assets, the company said.

Trading began today on Boerse Stuttgart Digital Exchange (BSDEX), a fully regulated digital asset exchange under the German Banking Act, according to a statement. As of now, BSDEX is trading only one pair, the bitcoin-euro.

The exchange announced plans to launch a fully regulated digital asset exchange in December 2018, initially planned for launch in the first half of 2019.

BSDEX will open for German retail and institutional investors slowly followed by the entire EU, the exchange noted. Like other cryptocurrency exchanges, trading will be open nearly 24/7. Speaking with CoinDesk, the exchange said it plans on adding ethereum, litecoin, and XRP euro trading pairs this year and tokenized assets sometime in 2020.

“The market in cryptocurrencies is worth billions, and more digital assets will emerge on the basis of blockchain,” CEO Dr Dirk Sturz said in the statement. “Our goal is to build up the leading European trading venue for those assets.”

Boerse Stuttgart partnered with SolarisBank on the initiative. The bank will process payments and custody euro funds.

“BSDEX will give retail and institutional investors direct access to digital assets and provide flexible and relatively low-cost trading. We believe blockchain is set to bring about significant changes in the financial industry, and we want to leverage its potential to create the trading venue of the future,” said Peter Großkopf, CTO at BSDEX, in a statement.

A year ago, Boerse Stuttgart announced the launch of an initial coin offering (ICO) platform and more recently started trading litecoin and XRP exchange-traded notes (ETNs).

Boerse Stuttgart exchange via Boerse Stuggart