The SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) has partnered with Swiss institutional crypto trading platform RULEMATCH. The crypto firm is not a typical crypto exchange. It purely acts as a trading venue, with others providing market making and liquidity. For the partnership, RULEMATCH provides both trading and post-trade settlement, with SDX providing digital asset custody services. The integrated offering will be available later this quarter.
David Newns, head of SDX, noted that the partnership enables “transparency, capital efficiency and, crucially, a clear separation of trading and custody roles. This means institutional investors retain full control over their collateral via SDX’s custody and can segregate assets by crypto address, ensuring clarity on asset location at all times.”
SDX is best known for high profile bond issuances and as host of the first production wholesale CBDC pilots used at scale. However, it launched a web3 / crypto offering in 2022, providing custody and staking. It is currently exploring the provision of crypto trading services in Europe. Last year it partnered with German regulated DLT Finance for crypto brokerage. By contrast Swiss-based RULEMATCH is a trading venue rather than a broker.
Independent custody for RULEMATCH clients
However, we believe this partnership is more about RULEMATCH than SDX, in that SDX is now providing a credible independent digital asset custody service for RULEMATCH customers.
“We know from our participants that many of them would love to use a secure, independent custodian like SDX to manage the full lifecycle of their crypto asset holdings, while also leveraging the competitive advantages of trading and settling on RULEMATCH,” said David Riegelnig, CEO of RULEMATCH.
Meanwhile, late last year RULEMATCH launched its crypto trading venue targeting banks and institutions. DLT Finance and BBVA were amongst the institutions using the platform at launch. Flow Traders and major German market maker (and crypto player) Bankhaus Scheich are liquidity providers. When the platform launched, we highlighted that RULEMATCH was effectively the custodian, which was not entirely risk free. Today’s deal solves that issue.
