UK Regulator Grants License to Digital Security Exchange Archax
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has granted several licenses to digital securities exchange and custodian Archax – making it one of the world’s first authorized trading spaces for the asset-class.
- Archax said Wednesday it was now licensed as a multilateral trading facility (MTF) exchange, a broker, a cash and asset custodian.
- It is also the first crypto-asset firm to be registered with the FCA – a designation that will soon be mandatory for all companies working in the digital asset space from January next year.
- The London-based exchange, which is orientated towards institutions, is now authorized to host offerings, act as a trading venue as well as custody digital securities.
- Co-founder Matthew Pollard told CoinDesk Archax had become a “one-stop-shop” for the still-nascent digital securities space.
- A digital security is a catch-all term for traditional assets, such as equity or debt, that has been tokenized and put on the blockchain.
- The upshot from Wednesday’s announcement is that institutions will be able to trade digital securities on an authorized market for the very first time in the U.K.
- Archax CEO Graham Rodford said the exchange now had 35 issuances in the pipeline.
- Pollard said that Archax employed its own specific admissions criteria for the type of digital securities it would allow on its platform.
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