Altcoin News: Germany’s Second Largest Stock Exchange Launches Spot Trading in Bitcoin

September 24, 2019, by Marko Vidrih on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

The Stuttgart Stock Exchange, the second-largest in Germany, has launched a regulated venue for trading in digital assets, CoinDesk writes.

Trading on the Boerse Stuttgart Digital Exchange (BSDEX), a fully regulated digital asset exchange in accordance with the German Banking Act, started this Monday. Currently, the exchange supports only one pair — Bitcoin to Euro.

The exchange announced a plan to create a separate platform for digital assets in December 2018 and initially intended to launch it in the first half of the year. Gradually, access to BSDEX will be provided to institutional and retail investors throughout the European Union. As with other cryptocurrency exchanges, trading here will be conducted around the clock seven days a week. This year, the exchange also plans to list Ethereum, Litecoin and XRP, all of which will be available for exchange in euros, and in 2020 — to begin tokenization of assets.

“The market in cryptocurrencies is worth billions, and more digital assets will emerge on the basis of blockchain,” CEO Dr Dirk Sturz said in the statement. “Our goal is to build up the leading European trading venue for those assets.”

To implement its plan, the Stuttgart Stock Exchange entered into an agreement with SolarisBank, which will handle the processing of payments and the storage of funds in euros.

“BSDEX will give retail and institutional investors direct access to digital assets and provide flexible and relatively low-cost trading. We believe blockchain is set to bring about significant changes in the financial industry, and we want to leverage its potential to create the trading venue of the future,” said Peter Großkopf, CTO at BSDEX, in a statement.

In April, the Swiss division of the Stuttgart Stock Exchange announced the launch of exchange-traded products (ETP) tied to Litecoin and XRP cryptocurrency prices.

Author: Marko Vidrih