Fidelity, Schwab, Citadel Securities Plan to Launch New Crypto Exchange

A consortium of financial heavyweights including electronic trading giant Citadel Securities and brokerages Fidelity Investments and Charles Schwab Corp. announced plans to launch a new cryptocurrency exchange According to a story in The Wall Street Journal. The launch of the exchange, to be called EDX Markets, is a sign that Wall Street continues to see opportunity in digital assets despite this year’s slump. EDX said that it would aim to serve both individual and institutional investors. It didn’t provide a timeline for its launch. It said the technology to run its exchange would be provided by Members Exchange, or MEMX, an upstart stock exchange founded in 2019 by some of the same firms backing EDX, including Citadel Securities, Fidelity, Schwab and Virtu. EDX said the operations of the exchange would be separated from the firms that trade on its marketplace, which “will remove significant conflicts of interest that affect existing cryptocurrency exchanges.” The exchange’s CEO is to be Jamil Nazarali, a longtime executive with Citadel Securities. Miami-based Citadel Securities is among the world’s biggest trading operations, active in stocks, options, futures and other asset classes.