Switzerland’s stock exchange is building a fully integrated trading, settlement and custody infrastructure for digital assets, called SIX Digital Exchange (SDX).
SIX is regulated as an operator of Financial Market Infrastructure by Swiss Authorities, Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority and the Swiss National Bank, and intends SDX to have the same standard of oversight and regulation.
According to SIX, the service will provide a safe environment for issuing and trading digital assets, and enable the tokenisation of existing securities and non-bankable assets to make previously untradeable assets tradeable.
The SDX service will be mainly based on distributed ledger technology, and the first services are expected to be rolled out in the first half of 2019.
Thomas Zeeb, head of securities and exchanges at SIX, said: “The digital space currently faces a number of key challenges. These include the absence of regulation that ensures official safety, security, stability, transparency and accountability—all of which contribute to a lack of trust.”
He added: “The challenge is less in the trading of assets but rather in the custody and asset servicing, including asset safety. As the stock exchange infrastructure for Switzerland, we know what it takes to build and run mission-critical and scalable, systemically important services.”
According to Jos Dijsselhof, CEO of SIX, commented: “This is the beginning of a new era for capital markets infrastructures. For us it is abundantly clear that much of what is going on in the digital space is here to stay and will define the future of our industry. The financial industry now needs to bridge the gap between traditional financial services and digital communities. This is the role that we at SIX can play.”
He added: “SIX is in a unique position in that it runs the entire securities and payments value chain for Switzerland already, and is ideally positioned to create the digital ecosystem for the future, allowing existing and new market participants to develop their business models for the opportunities available in this new environment.”
“These are strengths that we can bring to the digital space and contribute meaningfully to what is one of the most innovative and dynamic environments of our time.”
