Photo by Chris Li

Disruption of the equity markets and the financial markets at large has been nipping at the heels of established players what with the increasing adoption of blockchain technology and other ahead-of-the-curve capabilities developed by upstart fintech companies. Enter CDRX, a flag-bearer of this revolutionary movement, which has engineered a novel product known as CDRs or Crypto Depository Receipts that look set to upend the equity markets, and in time, credit and derivatives markets. CDRs are essentially a tokenised form of equity, for both new and existing issuance that grant a legal right to the underlying stock. These tokens can be traded freely and easily, like any cryptocurrency, on or off its proprietary exchange (soft launching in Q4 2018), which will then be rapidly expanded to include bonds and derivatives

Apart from being the first company to be able to tokenise existing issuance (a $600 trillion market), there are substantial advantages on offer to both investors and issuers alike. On the investor side, transaction costs associated with the execution of orders are dramatically reduced to cents per trade regardless of transaction size, which is value proposition no other traditional exchange is able to offer. Further, the adoption of advanced settlement solutions translates to more reliable, regulatory compliant, institutional grade settlement options, and a drastic reduction in settlement times to (at worst) mere hours. To top it off, tokenisation of equities enables fractional ownership, opening the market to all 3.2bn internet users, and translating into an even greater revenue stream for CDRX. For issuers, it means that a number of corporate actions, including share splits, are no longer required, spelling the end of intermediary expenses and potential shareholder issues. The other benefits for issuers include a substantial reduction in the cost and effort of executing corporate actions, and being able to distribute dividends more expediently at a fraction of the cost — all but eliminating $10bn worth of annual corporate actions costs.

On the operational side, CDRX is led by a stellar team of financial and crypto veterans, with experience spanning trading, sales and structuring, technology and e-commerce, legal and regulatory, garnered from banks including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, HSBC, UBS and Citibank. The synergetic outcome of this combined expertise, together with its one-of-a-kind product offering, means that it is perfectly-placed to tap into widespread and increasing demand for solutions which lower costs, increase trading efficiencies, deepen liquidity and remain regulatory compliant for both retail and institutional investors. Expect to see CDRX capturing a significant share of global financial market trading and permanently transform the existing paradigms around ownership and issuance of financial products.