Exchanges
Extauri Set to Become Europe’s First Fully Compliant Digital Security Exchange
Press release
In recent news, Extauri has begun onboarding security tokens in anticipation of their upcoming platform launch. This process is open to companies that have already completed their own security token offering / digital security offering.
While there is often talk about the benefits of security tokens, and the new levels of liquidity they offer investors, this simply isn’t the case…yet. For the promise of increased liquidity and financial flexibility to be realized, we need to see the launch of secondary markets. We need to see exchanges that bridge the gap between crypto and traditional finance. Extauri aims to do just that.
About the platform
The exchange is expected to launch in Q2 of 2019. Although not all planned functions will be available at that time, core functions will be active.
The end goal is to have a comprehensive platform that appeals not only to investors, but potential token issuers as well. The exchange plans, in time, to play host for ICOs and STOs that wish to tokenize their companies.
Recognizing that the security of an investor’s funds is paramount, the exchange will be utilizing various methods to ensure this is achieved. The simplest and, arguably most important, step is in offering the My Admin Wallet (MAW). This will serve as a wallet for exchange users to hold their funds. What is important to note is that users will hold their own private keys. This means that not even Extauri can access funds within MAW (Extauri simply processes transactions). Simply put, if you don’t control the private keys to where you store your money, you are NOT in control of your money.
Keeping in line with the ideology behind digital securities, Extauri is a fully licensed exchange. Oversight will take place by both the FMA and BaFin.
Extauri
Extauri was founded in 2018, and is based out of Liechtenstein. With this exchange, they plan one being the first legally compliant digital securities exchange to launch within Europe.
Beyond the discussed exchange, Extauri has future plans of attaining a Multilateral Trading Facility licence (MTF). This means that they would become a self-regulated trading venue. In doing so, they would gain the ability to trade between various exchanges.
Upcoming STO of their own
Similar to competing platforms, Extauri plans on releasing their own token. This token will act as a utility token, and is based off of the ERC-20 protocol.
Known as TAURI, this token will provide users of the platform with various benefits
- 50% discount on transactions fees
- Discounts on ICOs and STOs hosted on the Extauri platform, if paid in TAURI tokens
Extauri is currently completing their private sale, with a public sale scheduled to launch in the coming weeks. When this occurs, we will provide more details and insight into the token sale.
Mutual Aid
With the launch of Archax’s anticipated digital assets exchange looming large, the importance of populating listed assets is crucial. What better company to fill this need than Polymath? – a seasoned company already responsible for the tokenization of more assets than nearly anyone.
A mutual need was recognized between each company, resulting in the recently announced collaboration between the two.
The Details
This aforementioned collaboration will see Archax become home to assets tokenized through Polymath. In doing so, investors in these assets will finally be able to tap into higher levels of liquidity – a trait long touted as being key to digital securities.
Archax clients benefit through an increased selection of investment opportunities.
Polymath clients benefit by seeing their tokenized securities become more attractive through new found liquidity and exposure.
Commentary
Upon announcing their newly established agreement, representatives from each, Archax and Polymath, took the time to comment. The following is what each had to say on the matter.
Graeme Moore, Head of Tokenization at Polymath, stated,
“At Polymath, partnership is part of our DNA. While we make it easy for firms to create and manage security tokens, we rely on the expertise of our partners for areas like secondary trading. We’re thrilled to work with Archax to provide security token issuers with an end-to-end solution for security token creation, management, distribution, and liquidity.”
Graham Rodford, CEO of Archax, stated,
“We are building the first truly global and institutional digital securities exchange based out of London and are looking to list credible token projects from across the world. Partnerships with leading players like Polymath ensure we are integrated into the emerging tokenisation ecosystem and we look forward to working with them and their clients, providing a secondary trading venue for tokens created using their technology.”
Recent Attention
Beyond news of these companies working together, each have found themselves attracting attention in recent days, due to other activities.
Archax was a participant of the recently hosted Security Tokens Realised conference, which was hosted in London, UK. Our own CEO, Antoine Tardif, attended this event, coming away particularly impressed with a few companies – one of these being Archax, themselves.
Financial Institutions Exploring Digital Securities at ‘Security Tokens Realised’ Event
Polymath, on the other hand, has recently given the public a glimpse at the functionality of their on-going Polymesh project. The company has high hopes for this blockchain, tailor-built for the digital securities sector.
Polymesh Whitepaper Sheds Light on Specialized Blockchain
Archax
Operating out of London, UK, Archax is an upcoming digital asset exchange, which was founded in 2018. With the exchange’s pending launch, the team behind Archax has been hard at work, establishing various partnerships to ensure an attractive platform.
CEO, Graham Rodford, currently oversees company operations.
Polymath
One of the more recognizable names in digital securities, Polymath, is a tokenization platform which was founded in 2017. From their headquarters in Toronto, Canada, Polymath has assisted in the tokenization of over 150 assets to date.
CEO, Kevin North, currently oversees company operations.
Team Effort
A pair of London based companies, Archax and VALK, have recently released news that they intend to work in unison in an effort to better serve the digital securities sector.
End-to-End
This newly established partnership was undertaken with the goal of providing clients of each, Archax and VALK, access to a suite of services enabling end-to-end issuance/trading of digital securities.
In order to enable this comprehensive suite of services, each company will bring something different to the table.
- VALK will facilitate the tokenization, issuance, and management of digital securities
- Archax will facilitate post trade activities and liquidity through access to secondary markets
What this means, is that digital securities created through VALK will have a home on the Archax Exchange. The result is that each company, and the respective digital securities, benefit greatly through the aforementioned capabilities.
Past Integration
Beyond their geographical location, there is one commonality between these two companies – use of the R3 Corda Platform.
As clients of R3 Corda, each, Archax and VALK, have access to an open-source DLT based platform, which enables to deployment of smart contracts.
Archax to Streamline Post-Trade Activity through R3 Corda Platform Integration
Commentary
In their partnership announcement, representatives from each, VALK and Archax, took the time to comment. The following is what they had to say on what this collaboration will mean, moving forward.
Antoine Loth and Elie Azzi, cofounders of VALK, stated,
“We are delighted to seal this partnership with Archax and look forward to being one of the first platforms on Corda to integrate with their exchange. Our clients will now have access to a gateway to liquidity and Archax can benefit from the incredible deal flow of our partners who are issuing, financing and trading very high-quality assets in the private equity, fund, infrastructure and real estate worlds. We are glad to be building the business interface between top performing and reputable institutional players and Archax, the most innovative market venue in the UK.”
Graham Rodford, CEO of Archax, stated,
“We are building the first truly global, institutional market for digital securities based in London. As such, we are keen to list the most credible token offerings – so partnerships like this one with VALK are highly relevant and important to us. Although we are blockchain agnostic in terms of the tokens that we list, we have partnered with R3 to use Corda for our own ledger and post-trade activities, so this collaboration with VALK, who use Corda too, makes a lot of sense. We are excited by the opportunity that the tokenisation of assets brings, and we look forward to working with VALK going forward.”
Speaking with Graham
In mid-2019, we were fortunate to have completed an exclusive interview with Archax CEO, Graham Rodford. Here, Rebecca Stoner, COO of securities.io, delves into what Archax hopes to accomplish and how they will achieve their goals.
Interview Series – Graham Rodford, CEO of Archax
VALK
Founded in 2018, VALK maintains headquarters in London, England. The team behind VALK has developed tech solutions which allow for the ‘management, trading, and investment of unlisted assets’.
Cofounder,s Antoine Loth and Elie Azzi, currently oversee company operations.
Archax
Founded in 2018, Archax maintains headquarters in London, England. Above all, the team at Archax is working to develop, and launch, an anticipated exchange, expected to serve the digital securities sector.
CEO, Graham Rodford, currently oversees company operations.
In Other News
While the launch of their digital securities exchange has taken longer to develop than originally anticipated, Archax remains one of the more anticipated projects in the sector. As such, we have found ourselves covering news pertaining to this young company on various occasions. The following are a few articles detailing what, exactly, Archax has been up to as of late.
ClearBank Chosen by Archax to Provide Various Services
Tokeny and Archax form Strategic Partnership
HighCastle Seeks Increased Liquidity through Archax
Globacap to Integrate Services with Digital Exchange Archax
In preparation for the launch of the highly-anticipated SDX exchange, SIX announced the successful acquisition of a stake in the duara platform. Daura is a token issuance and registry platform which has seen considerable success over the last year. Now, SIX and its team of collaborators seek to utilize duara’s proprietary software to further the SDX exchange’s capabilities.
A Strategic Advantage – SDX Exchange
As part of SIX’s SDX strategy, the firm partnered with Swisscom, Sygnum Bank, Custodigit and daura. The company intends to utilize the best protocols from each platform in the creation of the SDX exchange. Together, SIX’s team seeks to create a complete security token ecosystem. Here investors and businesses can plan, issue, trade, and manage their security tokens from one easy to understand interface.
Discussing the groups’ strategy, Johannes Höhener, daura chairman and Head of fintech at Swisscom spoke on the importance of the joint development work. Höhener pointed out the team’s other tasks. These tasks include helping to create a new standardizing for the tokenization of Swiss assets. She also touched on the company’s plans to expand into operating private blockchains as part of the overall strategy.
Additionally, Peter Schnürer, CEO of daura took a moment to speak on the benefits and security gained from both investors and companies. He explained some of these benefits including the increased transaction speeds. Typically, traditional securities can take days to settle. The SDX system will allow real-time trading and settlement. Impressively, the platform will be able to tokenize assets in just hours.
Players in the SDX Exchange Project
SIX managed to put together an experienced team of blockchain firms to bring the SDX exchange to life. For example, Sygnum Bank continues to make headlines regarding its September launch date as the world’s first digital asset bank. Also, Deutsche Bourse saw heavy publicity this year after it completed a successful proof of concept of its securities trading ledger. These tests proved many of the advantages obtained when settling securities transactions using distributed ledger technology. Notably, the technology can also tokenize and exchange equity and cash tokens
Daura – SDX Exchange
Duara is an advanced digital share register. The firm also specializes in the issuance of security tokens. In the duara ecosystem, one Tokenized share equates to one newly created share. The reduced costs and added speed simplifies the entire share issuance process. Duara enable enables SMEs to sell stakes in their businesses while reducing the costs of crowdfunding campaigns significantly.
SIX Makes Moves
SIX appears to be ready to take the next steps towards the development of the SDX exchange. The firm’s acquisition of duara shares proves that the company is ready and willing to take all the necessary actions to ensure the success of SDX. Consequently, you can expect to see a lot of hype surrounding the launch of this highly-anticipated platform in the coming months.