Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX), with a turnover of $135 billion, presented a technical document that defines the standards for the crypto and distributed ledger infrastructure.
The exchange’s “thought paper” defines technical and operational standards for the issuance of crypto assets. It can greatly facilitate the financial institutions’ operations that are moving from the issuance of ordinary assets to the issuance of more encrypted ones.
According to ADX’s Executive Director Rashed Al Blooshi, their latest development emerged as a response to the growing Blockchain infrastructure development in the region. He acknowledged that as the transition will move from old to new finance, their regulatory practices would have to be accelerated.
“Financial market infrastructure plays a pivotal role in supporting crypto markets, offering investor protection, preventing market fragmentation, as well as making it possible for financial institutions to provide advanced services in the field of crypto-assets. At ADX, we embrace new and innovative technology and are always looking to capitalize on advances in FinTech; particularly in crypto-assets to optimize the benefits we offer to our investors and stakeholders,” the financier noted.
Digital ledger project’s growth
In Abu Dhabi, there is an increasing number of public and private digital ledger projects in the field of international trade, transport, energy, health, and education. Similar pilot projects are likely to launch their own tokens to attract new investors and prove voting and property rights. At the same time, many of them may be weak and fail after some time. Numerous fallings of such digital projects were the reason for local regulators to pay attention for updating rules since the given unique ways of assets issuing can’t be used in FinTech and DLT areas.
ADX exchange’s “thought paper” was released in cooperation with Central Securities Depositories. It may be the first important step to ensure maximum protection of investors in the regional crypto assets sector developing.
Emirates Securities and Commodities Authority (ESCA), the area’s local regulator, develops its own ICO regulation rules with the support of an unnamed international organization, which is rumored to be the International Securities Service Association, ISSA.
Earlier in October, the regulator spoke about an interest towards introducing initial coin offering (ICO) for capital markets. ADX is currently developing an ICO trading platform for this initiative.
Arman Shirinyan
Dan Burgin
Alex Dovbnya