Keep knowledgeable with free updates
Merely signal as much as the Cryptocurrencies myFT Digest — delivered on to your inbox.
The Swiss inventory change is exploring the creation of a venue in Europe for buying and selling cryptocurrencies, in a bid to muscle in on a market dominated by long-standing digital belongings corporations resembling Binance, OKX and Coinbase.
The group is contemplating utilizing its fame and Switzerland’s superior crypto legal guidelines as a hook for giant conventional buyers who’re rising fascinated by buying and selling digital belongings.
“Crypto has turn out to be increasingly a recognised asset class,” Bjørn Sibbern, international head of exchanges at SIX Group, advised the Monetary Instances, including that the corporate is analyzing creating “a platform the place we may also help facilitate buying and selling, whether or not it’s [spot] crypto or whether or not it’s derivatives.”
Conventional finance corporations have thus far largely shied away from organising crypto buying and selling venues owing to a scarcity of clear regulation and fears over reputational injury.
A number of massive corporations resembling Deutsche Boerse, Nomura and Standard Chartered have arrange their very own crypto exchanges, usually separate from their major companies.
However CBOE World Markets shut its spot crypto venue this yr, blaming a scarcity of clear regulation. CME Group explored launching bitcoin trading in Might, the FT reported, though its chief government has since mentioned the change has no present plans.
The approval of spot bitcoin and ethereum change traded funds by the US Securities and Trade Fee earlier this yr spurred a rush of retail and institutional funding into the asset, and raised hopes that extra buyers can be eager to then commerce the cash straight themselves.
Though the value of bitcoin, the world’s hottest cryptocurrency, has fallen to round $60,000 from a report excessive of round $72,000 earlier this yr, it’s nonetheless up 40 per cent this yr.
Switzerland has turn out to be one of the vital crypto-friendly international locations in Europe, with legal guidelines across the buying and selling and custody of belongings and the classification of several types of tokens that many different international locations are but to introduce.
“We’re different methods for us to increase in Europe and as part of that, we’re additionally [whether] crypto ought to be part of it,” Sibbern mentioned, including that the venue would solely be obtainable to institutional buyers resembling asset managers.
“We see the development that increasingly international banks and establishments are crypto,” he added.
SIX runs a crypto derivatives firm known as AsiaNext out of Singapore, in a three way partnership with Japan’s SBI Group. “We’re ought to we do one thing related in Europe,” Sibbern mentioned, including that the corporate “may additionally say that is one thing we don’t need to pursue”.
The Swiss group, which is owned by 120 banks, runs a separate digital change, the place 9 digital bonds have been listed since 2018 by issuers resembling funding financial institution UBS and town of Lugano native authority. Sibbern mentioned the digital change “may . . . increase that idea” to incorporate crypto buying and selling itself.
Crypto buying and selling would additionally mark a notable enlargement for SIX, whose itemizing venues in Switzerland and Madrid hosted two of the biggest IPOs in Europe this yr — Spanish magnificence group Puig and dermatology group Galderma.
