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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 comparable to Binance, OKX and Coinbase.
The group is contemplating utilizing its popularity and Switzerland’s superior crypto legal guidelines as a hook for giant conventional buyers who’re rising taken with buying and selling digital belongings.
“Crypto has change into increasingly more a recognised asset class,” Bjørn Sibbern, world head of exchanges at SIX Group, informed the Monetary Occasions, including that the corporate is inspecting creating “a platform the place we will 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 establishing crypto buying and selling venues owing to a scarcity of clear regulation and fears over reputational harm.
A number of huge corporations comparable to Deutsche Boerse, Nomura and Standard Chartered have arrange their very own crypto exchanges, usually separate from their principal companies.
However CBOE International Markets shut its spot crypto venue this yr, blaming a scarcity of clear regulation. CME Group explored launching bitcoin trading in Could, 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 could be eager to then commerce the cash immediately themselves.
Though the value of bitcoin, the world’s hottest cryptocurrency, has fallen to round $60,000 from a document excessive of round $72,000 earlier this yr, it’s nonetheless up 40 per cent this yr.
Switzerland has change into one of the crucial 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 taking a look at different methods for us to increase in Europe and as part of that, we’re additionally taking a look at [whether] crypto must be part of it,” Sibbern mentioned, including that the venue would solely be accessible to institutional buyers comparable to asset managers.
“We see the pattern that increasingly more world banks and establishments are taking a look at 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 taking a look at 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 wish 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 comparable to 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 growth 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.
