We recently caught up with Bryan Seiler, CEO at TAGZ, a major Australian cryptocurrency exchange.

TAGZ is reportedly one of the world’s biggest, fully-regulated and licensed anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing (CTF) compliant crypto exchanges. When dealing with decentralized digital assets, you want to make sure you’re trading on a compliant exchange.

During the past few years, there’ve been numerous instances where a loosely regulated or non-regulated digital asset exchange mismanaged users’ funds, leading to huge financial losses for traders across the globe.

TAGZ’s official website says that the exchange is an AUSTRAC-registered “dual gateway exchange” for cryptocurrencies. AUSTRAC, or the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre, is an Australian government agency that uses advanced financial intelligence and sophisticated regulatory technology (Regtech) to prevent illicit activities such as money laundering, and terrorist financing.

During our interview with Mr. Seiler, he discussed the major security and regulatory measures crypto exchanges should incorporate to offer a safe trading experience for their clients. He also confirmed that TAGZ would launch Bitcoin (BTC) margin trading.

BitcoinExchangeGuide: What are the three most important security and regulatory measures all cryptocurrency exchanges should implement, according to your professional experience?

Bryan Seiler: Security is such a prevalent issue and is vitally important to have the correct redundancy measures and security protocols in place to prevent intrusions and cyber attacks but moreover it proves just as difficult to communicate the right messaging to what we and other exchanges are doing differently to the public.

The regulative aspect is a completely different kettle of fish altogether and depending on where an exchange is based and which country or jurisdiction it is based out of, a reputable exchange needs to uphold their own adequate KYC and AML policies.

BitcoinExchangeGuide: You’ve mentioned that TAGZ will be offering Bitcoin margin trading. Please tell us more about what other special trading products you aim to offer? What are your thoughts on crypto futures contracts?

Upon our full-platform release, we will be enabling margin trading on major assets to offer our users the added ability to use leverage on main markets; Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and TAG5 pairs. We will also be looking at expanding our trading products line with custom-built derivative packages allowing for greater diversity within our platform.

BitcoinExchangeGuide: What major crypto-assets does TAGZ currently support and which ones does it intend to offer for trading in the future? In general, what are the selection criteria for digital assets? How do you know or determine which crypto-asset should be listed?

Bryan Seiler: We have the ability to support any and all blockchains including forks. All new markets being added to the TAGZ platform first undergo a basic vetting procedure where our backend team carries out the essential groundwork to make sure any new potential project is qualified and meets our criteria for listing. This is done to protect our users from getting caught up with illegitimate projects or scams.

We are also currently looking at implementing an added new voting model to give an opportunity to projects that have a large community following but are capital poor an aid to list on our exchange platform at no upfront cost and without the need to pay exorbitant listing fees.

BitcoinExchangeGuide: Are you planning to offer other products, like different crypto-based lending and staking opportunities?

Sticking to the basics and making sure ‘we do what we do well’ is the best recipe for success instead of needing to confuse things and run rampant with the unnecessary addition of features that can easily taken advantage of and used as a type of Ponzi scheme by many other scrupulous exchanges and online platforms. With this being said we will be deploying our new card purchasing facility to enable real-time and instant crypto purchases via debit or credit card very shortly which our community has been asking for.

BitcoinExchangeGuide: What are your short and long-term goals for 2020 and beyond in terms of business and product development?

The awareness of TAGZ needs to be brought into the appeal of the public eye a lot more so as to acquire new users and expand into a wide variety of new markets. We will continue to put the pedal to the metal by capturing new interest through a ramp-up of brand marketing including promotional giveaways and online competitions which will encourage others to spread the word about the TAGZ brand.

We will also be laser-like focussed in identifying market opportunities that can allow for greater expansion such as new product developments and additions to our platform to make life for our users much easier, friendlier and more fun that will inevitably lead to a better overall experience.