Yesterday the Swiss stock exchange owner SIX announced it had invested in San Francisco based Omniex, which provides an investment and trading platform for digital assets, including cryptocurrencies. The startup targets institutions.
The deal involves a partnership in which Omniex will provide SIX and its SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) with a gateway to digital exchanges and over the counter (OTC) market makers.
“We see a growing need in the market to access cryptocurrencies. Our new collaboration will provide a standardized and secure gateway via SIX as the trusted partner of the financial industry,” said Thomas Zeeb, Head Securities & Exchanges, member of Executive Board, SIX.
He continued: “With SDX as the digital exchange infrastructure in development, the collaboration with Omniex to deliver the front end for clients, both for existing cryptocurrencies, as well as in future for SDX-listed assets, is an important addition to the digital ecosystem.”
Looking at Omniex’s offering, it sees its unique selling point as consolidating a fragmented marketplace. The company is neither an exchange nor a market maker and is never a counterparty to trades, so it also doesn’t hold money. Instead, it provides a technical solution, a gateway to execute trades across the multiple exchanges and OTC venues with which it’s integrated. And investors have a consolidated view of their portfolio positions.
According to CrunchBase, to date, the startup has raised a seed round of $5m in October 2017 led by Jump Capital and Wicklow Capital, with participation from Digital Currency Group and others. The company opened its doors in 2018. Its co-founder and CEO, Hu Liang, is a State Street veteran. He had two stints at the firm, most recently for six and half years ending as SVP for the Emerging Technologies Center.
At SIBOS last September, SDX launched a prototype version of its blockchain digital assets platform and distributed central securities depository (CSD). At the time, the company said a full launch would be in late 2020 to enable it to sort out legal and regulatory issues.
Since then, it also invested in Swiss tokenization firm daura for digitizing corporate stocks and collaborated with Swisscom.
