Switzerland’s SIX explores launching crypto exchange

The Swiss stock exchange is exploring the creation of a venue in Europe for trading cryptocurrencies, in a bid to muscle in on a market dominated by long-standing digital assets firms such as Binance, OKX and Coinbase.

The group is considering using its reputation and Switzerland’s advanced crypto laws as a hook for large traditional investors who are growing interested in trading digital assets.

“Crypto has become more and more a recognised asset class,” Bjørn Sibbern, global head of exchanges at SIX Group, told the Financial Times, adding that the company is examining creating “a platform where we can help facilitate trading, whether it’s [spot] crypto or whether it’s derivatives”.

Traditional finance firms have mostly shied away from setting up crypto trading venues owing to a lack of clear regulation and fears over reputational damage.

A few big firms such as Deutsche Boerse, Nomura and Standard Chartered have set up their own crypto exchanges, typically separate from their main businesses.

But Cboe Global Markets shut its spot crypto venue this year, blaming a lack of clear regulation. CME Group explored launching bitcoin trading in May, the FT reported, although its chief executive has since said the exchange has no current plans.

The approval of spot bitcoin and ethereum exchange traded funds by the US Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this year spurred a rush of retail and institutional investment into the asset, and raised hopes that more investors would be keen to then trade the coins directly themselves.

Although the price of bitcoin, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, has fallen to about $60,000 from a record high of about $72,000 earlier this year, it is still up 40 per cent this year.

Switzerland has become one of the most crypto-friendly countries in Europe, with laws around the trading and custody of assets and the classification of different types of tokens that many other countries are yet to introduce.

“We are looking at other ways for us to expand in Europe and as a part of that, we are also looking at [whether] crypto should be a part of it,” Sibbern said, adding that the venue would only be available to institutional investors such as asset managers. 

“We see the trend that more and more global banks and institutions are looking at crypto,” he added.

SIX runs a crypto derivatives company called AsiaNext out of Singapore, in a joint venture with Japan’s SBI Group. “We are looking at should we do something similar in Europe,” Sibbern said, adding that the company “could also say this is something we do not want to pursue”.

The Swiss group, which is owned by 120 banks, runs a separate digital exchange, where nine digital bonds have been listed since 2018 by issuers such as investment bank UBS and the city of Lugano local authority. Sibbern said the digital exchange “could . . . expand that concept” to include crypto trading itself.

Crypto trading would also mark a notable expansion for SIX, whose listing venues in Switzerland and Madrid hosted two of the biggest IPOs in Europe this year — Spanish beauty group Puig and dermatology group Galderma.