Graham Rodford, CEO of Archax Exchange – Interview Series

Graham Rodford is the CEO and Co-Founder of Archax exchange based in London, England.  Graham has almost 20 years of experience in the traditional funds/investment world and is applying that knowledge and experience to digital securities.  A testament to Graham and his team's experience is that Archax is one of the very few regulated digital securities exchanges, in arguably the world's largest financial centre.

Archax is a London-based regulated exchange for trading asset-backed tokens; the exchange is geared primarily towards the professional investor community.  Archax aims to bridge the crypto world and the traditional investment space with an institution-quality approach. 

RS: In one sentence, how would you describe Archax?

GR: Archax is a forthcoming regulated, institutional, digital securities exchange based in London.

RS: What is the long-term vision for Archax?

GR: Our vision for Archax is to be the leading venues for the primary issuance and secondary trading of digital securities globally, operating a 24×7 market.

RS: Who will be able to use the Archax platform? 

GR: Our focus is in professional investors and institutional clients from all over the world as direct users – both the buy-side and sell-side. Any retail participation will be through brokers.

RS: What differentiators does Archax have from similar exchanges?  How will those appeal to the professional investor community?  

GR: A focus only on institutions/professional investors – most other venues cover retail flow.

A focus on security tokens – most other venues cover cryptocurrencies/utility tokens, which are unappealing to institutions currently.

The first digital securities exchange regulated in London, the world’s leading financial centre – most other venues are regulated in peripheral jurisdictions.

Archax team all come from the traditional financial markets world and are used to operating in regulated markets globally.

All our technology partners are proven suppliers to the traditional institutional space.

Archax will be integrated into the existing traditional trading workflow through vendor partnerships

Archax supports industry standard trading APIs like FIX

All the above appeals to the professional investor community.

RS: Archax is a regulated digital securities exchange; can you tell us some more about where you’re regulated and what the regulation means for the investors and companies listed on the exchange.

GR: Most other crypto exchanges are unregulated, and those that are regulated tend to be from peripheral jurisdictions. The traditional institutional investment world does not like trading in venues regulated in those types of jurisdictions, they want to trade on venues regulated in leading financial centres like London.

Companies looking to list a digital security want exposure to the blue-chip institutional investment world – an exchange like Archax gives them that exposure.

RS: You’ve formed a few new exciting partnerships recently; can you tell us some of the benefits these partnerships will provide?

GR: Our partnerships with proven technology firms from the traditional space like Aquis and Quod give us proven capabilities and direct links straight into our target marketplace.

Our partnership with tokeniser firms like Tokeny and Securitize gives us a flow of quality digital security listings for our exchange.

Our partnership with ClearBank gives us institutional-grade banking capabilities – all backed up by the Bank of England.

RS: When do you expect Archax to go live?

GR: We expect Archax to go live in late Q3 early Q4 this year.

RS: As someone with extensive experience in financial markets, where do you envision the digital securities market going in the next 2 years, and 5 years?

GR: It is still early days for security tokens and over the next two years we expect to see the required supporting ecosystem continue to emerge with the key players in primary issuance, custody and secondary market trading establish themselves. The regulatory landscape will evolve too with the regulators in major financial centres clarifying their position regarding security tokens other crypto assets too. The number of firms looking to issue security tokens will grow as well, with larger and more prominent issuances appearing as the whole landscape starts to take shape.

Looking out to five years, all this activity will create liquidity on these new markets and nurture mainstream adoption which we expect to build momentum quite fast. We will also start to see existing financial instruments use blockchain/digital security tokenisation too – as this is a far more efficient and frictionless way of handling financial assets than is used currently – particular in the post-trade clearing and settlement space.

RS: Is there anything else you would like to tell us?   

GR: The tokenisation of real-world assets using blockchain technology will not only unlock liquidity and create secondary markets for assets that are currently hard to trade, but also has the potential to disrupt all traditional financial markets too. Already there are more than 150 firms who have used or are looking to use security tokens as a way to raise capital or unlock asset value – a total value of over $2billion, with $400m raised so far.  This momentum is building with new initiatives appearing every day. The types of token range from tokenising equity/revenue/debt as a way of raising business capital, tokenising property or funds to create secondary market liquidity, and even tokenising more niche or exotic assets – like art, race horses, diamonds, container ships, aircraft – to unlock value in new, innovative ways.

You can find more news coverage about Archax here. 

And reach the Archax home page here.