Online trading and investing platform eToro has officially launched its own crypto exchange which will trade six major cryptocurrencies along with a newly launched raft of ten fiat-pegged stablecoins on a custom API-driven platform called eToroX.

Reporting live from Paris Blockchain Week Summit, Coin Rivet got the chance to catch up with eToro CEO Yoni Assia shortly after he made the announcement on stage.

The new exchange will be able to initially trade eight major fiat-pegged stablecoins (as ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum), six cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Dash, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin), and 37 trading pairs.

Speaking about the initial launch of crypto trading on the main eToro platform in 2014, Assia said: “We were by far the easiest way to sort of enter the crypto world. With easy on-ramps and immediate KYC, you could buy crypto assets without the need to understand what a private key even was.”

“Today, eToro has 10 million users on the world’s biggest social trading platform, and it’s going to be a gradual process to enable our existing users to come onto eToroX, which is catering for a more professional trader.”

Fully regulated in Gibraltar

The platform – which went live yesterday – is one of the first to be certified as a regulated Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) by the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission (GFSC).

Assia said: “The exchange itself is fully regulated, secure, and a high-performance API-driven platform.”

Assia went on to say that “there is demand for regulated crypto exchanges, especially when you look at the long tale of needing or wanting to trade fiat currencies against crypto assets.”

“The concept of what we’re building at eToroX is to tokenise a large set of fiat currencies, and then enable liquidity and market making in all of those fiat stablecoins versus the crypto assets we support to create one platform where you can trade crypto assets, tokens, and stablecoins.”

New tokenised asset

Speaking on stage, the CEO did mention that he believed that “we will see the greatest transfer of wealth ever as financial services move onto the blockchain. The blockchain brings transparency and a new paradigm for asset ownership. In time, we will see the tokenisation of all traditional asset classes, as well as the emergence of new asset classes.”

On the subject of listing on the new platform, Assia mentioned to Coin Rivet that “on eToroX, we’ll be able to list things that we weren’t able to list on eToro, which aren’t in the top 15 cryptocurrencies.”

Interestingly, he mentioned that he is also “looking at new types of asset classes such as real estate and art” to bring to the platform over the coming years. Assia went on to say that “we’re looking at this as more of a professional infrastructure to enable us to add more assets and get price discovery to those assets.”

He said that the firm is currently “talking to a couple of financial institutions about how they view their ability or interest to tokenise assets”.

"we feel for the first time that we actually own our own assets. Suddenly, when you own your own assets, you suddenly feel that your assets in the bank are not really yours."@yoniassia #ParisBlockchainWeek pic.twitter.com/GU08Y12HL4 — Mati Greenspan (@MatiGreenspan) April 16, 2019

Non-custodial future?

When questioned about any plans to move into the area of decentralised exchanges (DEXs), Assia said that he thought “the potential of a DEX is super exciting, but I think we’re still maybe three to five years before that becomes a standard.”

“We’re looking at a couple of options for non-custodial implementations for eToroX,” he said, but this won’t be any immediate priority because “the interest in non-custodial is less than we expected”.

When asked about potentially adding leverage to the platform – which will trade with just spot markets at launch – the CEO said: “We are planning to add leverage later this year.” Assia did mention that the initial leverage may be around the 5x mark, but there will be scope to increase this moving forward.