On Tuesday, several financial giants including Citadel Securities, Fidelity Digital Assets and Charles Schwab Corp. announced that the consortium of firms intend to roll out a crypto exchange.
According to the announcement, the crypto exchange would be called EDX Markets and reports indicated that other companies, such as Virtu Financial, Sequoia Capital and Paradigm are also in support.
The talk of the crypto trading platform had first come in the first week of June, but it was only this week that the companies confirmed launching the new crypto exchange.
As a matter of fact, they went as far as appoint a chief executive officer (CEO).
The EDX
Charles Schwab, Fidelity Digital Assets and Citadel Securities published a press release on Tuesday where they revealed that the financial heavyweights have gotten together to launch a crypto exchange.
Named EDX Markets (EDXM), the crypto exchange will have as its CEO James Nazarali, a former executive at Citadel Securities.
However, they have not given a launch date for the crypto exchange, but its trading engine will be under the operation of MEMX, which is also known as the Members Exchange.
Reports have also indicated that the upcoming launch of the EDX also includes the support of venture firms Sequoia Capital and Paradigm, along with trading company Virtu Financial.
The press release noted that the exchange will cater to both retail and institutional investors and it would be different from the traditional crypto exchanges that exist today.
The EDX exchange is aimed at eliminating the conflict of interest that plagues crypto exchanges these days.
The companies
While the digital assets arm of Fidelity has been part of the crypto space and has also engaged with Bitcoin for a while, Ken Griffin from Citadel has been one of the skeptics.
However, his perspective regarding crypto changed in March of this year and he disclosed that the security giant was planning to move into the crypto market.
Reports had then come in June that Citadel Securities would be launching a crypto exchange with Fidelity Digital Assets and Charles Schwab.
Charles Schwab
As the spokesperson for Charles Schwab, Mayura Hooper, had stated that interest in the crypto industry had become significant and they would invest in technologies and companies to provide access in a secure environment and with a strong regulatory focus.
Charles Schwab had taken its interest in the crypto space quite seriously because it had made another announcement in July.
The asset management subsidy of the financial giant introduced its first exchange-traded fund (ETF) related to cryptocurrencies.
It should be noted that while the crypto market has been struggling this year and many companies have had to let go of their employees due to the crypto winter, Fidelity Digital Assets has done the opposite.
The company had announced in June that it was going on a hiring spree because it was searching for people to help in managing its digital custody and crypto trading services.
