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 and a cash and asset custodian.
- It is also the first crypto-asset firm to be registered with the U.K.'s Financial Conduct Authority, 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 and CFO 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 has 35 issuances in the pipeline.
- Pollard said Archax employed its own specific admissions criteria for the type of digital securities it would allow on its platform.
See also: UK Financial Service Provider to Coinbase, Bitstamp Awarded FCA Payments License