EDX Markets (EDX), which is backed by Fidelity Digital Assets, Charles Schwab, and Citadel Securities, has officially launched its digital asset market in the US after nine months of building out its technology. EDX Markets CEO Jamil Nazarali announced the launch on LinkedIn, saying, “EDX’s official launch allows our outstanding team to bring to crypto the same values and standards of competition, transparency, fairness, and safety that investors in traditional assets expect and enjoy.”
The crypto exchange made headlines when it announced its creation in September with investments from major tradfi firms Fidelity, Schwab, Paradigm, Sequoia Capital, and Citadel. With the launch of its digital asset market comes a new round of capital which includes investments from Miami International Holdings, DV Crypto, and GTS among others.
What sets EDX Markets apart from other crypto exchanges is that it doesn’t custody customers’ digital assets. Instead, users will have to go through financial intermediaries to buy and sell crypto assets, similar to how trades are executed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or the Nasdaq (NASDAQ). According to Nazarali, regulators like this different approach because it creates a separation between the exchange function and the broker dealer function.
The exchange currently only offers four tokens – bitcoin (BTC), ethereum (ETH), litecoin (LITE), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) – partly due to the unclear regulatory landscape in the US. EDX Markets will later this year launch EDX Clearing to settle trades matched on EDX Markets.
Nazarali said in April, “We were founded really to solve a problem in the marketplace in the US.” While EDX Markets will consider an international expansion “down the line,” for right now, it will solely focus on its operations in the US.