When Emerging Trading Platforms Targeting on Digital Securities|Digital Security Frontier Vision #11
Welcome to Digital Security Frontier Vision: The Voice of the Core Builders from Global Digital Security Industry #11
Olga Duka is an infinitely curious serial entrepreneur with strong product vision backed by 15 years of expertise in stock markets and creative industries. Her professional experience includes working as a trader and portfolio manager at international markets, producing unique events and products in culture and education, and developing FinTech startups.
Today, Olga gives us a great insight by Introducing the current situation of emerging trading platforms and the development of digital securities industry.
Enjoy the Read!
1、We heard that you have 15 years of expertise in stock markets and creative industries. Why are you want to create a digital asset exchange?
My personal professional experience includes working in stock markets, startups and creative industries. This experience gave me a blend of art & business skills needed to find talented people, and then imagine and execute a good product together. Our team all together has a deep financial, startup and venture expertise, working in hedge funds, brokers, FinTech companies, VC, algorithmic and arbitrage funds.
Our idea stands on a premise, that if we combine financial technology & experience with the power of blockchain, then we can build an institutional grade trading platform, that will bring valid & liquid digital investment instruments. A bigger vision behind this premise is that such an approach will allow us to truly cater to retail investors, offering “investing from a spare cash” model in the future.
2、What is Zeus Exchange positioned to do?
Zeus Exchange — is a hybrid trading platform that allows affordable, legal and transparent access to conventional and tokenized securities. We tokenize public stocks and indices, offering an alternative for crypto traders and an arbitrage instrument for professional investors.
3、What do you think are the advantages of emerging digital asset exchanges compared to traditional stock exchanges with huge volume?
What digital assets can bring? Blockchain technology may cut down costs and simplify processes for the financial markets, allow new market participants and create new asset classes. It is also expected that it will help create entirely new markets such as tradable private companies in venture capital markets or illiquid assets tokenization to help bring in new businesses and new investors.
4、What licenses did Zeus Exchange have so far? Have you obtained the broker-dealer license? Did Zeus plan on getting an ATS license?
Yes, we are applying for several financial licenses, including broker-dealer in Singapore this year, while our full 5-year legal roadmap includes ATS licenses in Asia in the future. It’s a step-by-step process, as regulation takes time, effort and attention.
Our belief is that investors will be attracted to a platform that has a safe and legit connection between financial and crypto markets, offers legitimate and liquid financial and crypto assets to trade, and is able to cater to professional investors; and this is the foundation for future service development.
5、It is understood that Zeus Exchange intends to acquire Singapore license in the near future. Why do you want to acquire a license in Singapore?
Singapore is widely viewed as FinTech hub that strategically aims to become Smart Financial Center and the first Smart Nation, and is a top-tier country, being accepted by banking and financial organizations around the globe. Singapore is the early advocate of blockchain technology and crypto. Singapore has recently experienced an influx of funds, family offices, institutional-grade funds and financial vehicles, licensed to operate with crypto. This goes well with the backbone of Singapore financial industry (banking, asset management, forex, corporate finance), and it fits us as a FinTech / blockchain startup perfectly.
6、What is the general compliance process for a new exchange to enter the digital asset trading market? What is the biggest difficulty that Zeus Exchange has encountered in compliance, and how is it solved?
Compliance is on the side of the financial operator and is dictated by the license requirements. The biggest difficulty, in our experience, is to be able to apply both financial regulation and uncertain (!) blockchain regulation to compliance desk setup and operations and make sure that it would suit the regulator.
7、When is Zeus Exchange going to go online? What are the criteria for listing?
Right now, we are a startup in development, applying for licenses, and building the product. We expect to launch and start offering services at the end of 2019 — early 2020. We will already start showcasing the test Zeus platform in Summer during the RISE in Hong Kong.
We don’t have criteria for listing, because we don’t expect to list STO tokens any time soon. Zeus will launch offering tokenized public stocks, such as Starbucks, Microsoft, Apple, and probably some stock indices together with our partner BlackMoon Crypto.
8、According to our understanding, there are many trading platforms that are interested in digital assets. What kind of structure do you think will appear in the future of digital asset trading platform?
We think that we are witnessing new markets (or market segments) being born and being merged with traditional the financial market at the same time. I am not entirely convinced, that digital assets would be a full-blown new market, though even just a new investment asset class would represent a big opportunity, but I do think, that blockchain will simplify the underlying infrastructure for financial markets and empower the internet of value.
My personal view is that we will see a lot of hybrid solutions when financial institutions adopt blockchain and crypto companies enter financial markets. And I think that this mix will eventually change, support or create the market infrastructure needed (custody, clearing, brokers, exchanges, other trading facilities, market data, analytics, etc).
9、Many people think that the biggest problem that e global digital securities industry is facing is the lack of liquidity. What do you think? As a digital asset exchange, how do you think this problem can be solved?
Zeus Exchange is working with so-called “crypto wrapped around legacy” instruments, that are represented by asset tokens backed by underlying financial assets of various types. In this category, the owner buys a digital asset designed to track the underlying asset’s price. Such tokens are issued, traded and settled on the blockchain, but the underlying assets are held in the conventional financial system. The token may trade in fiat and in crypto.
While there are multiple assets that can be tokenized, we believe that stocks, indices and most liquid bonds (such as US Treasuries) would be the most useful for tokenization right now to support market development and bring in the liquidity of already existing assets with proven value.
10、Is there anything else that you would like to share about Zeus Exchange?
We’ve written an in-depth article about launching a FinTech/blockchain startup, and countries to consider from the regulatory standpoint. It might be interesting for startups out there!
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