Archax, the UK’s first regulated digital securities exchange, has concluded a deal with abrdn, making it the largest external shareholder of the exchange.
Established four years ago, Archax provides institutional investors with access to blockchain-based digital assets, serving as a bridge to traditional capital markets. Set to launch later this year, it is the first digital securities exchange to win approval from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), with permissions covering trading, custody and brokerage.
“Blockchain technologies are inevitably going to form a big part of the future of financial markets. There is the potential to offer greater transparency, greater speed and less trading friction by using these nascent digital technologies,” said Stephan Bird, chief executive of abrdn.
“With Archax, we will have a meaningful footprint in this fast-developing market – which is likely to evolve in a multitude of different ways that are relevant to our core businesses. This investment not only provides an opportunity for substantial financial benefits, it also creates a partnership with some of the leading thinkers in an area that has the potential to play a substantial role in the future of finance.”
By investing into Archax, abrdn will offer investors access to the venue as a route to acquire new investment opportunities through digital securities. It will also bring the investment manager new connections to existing offerings through tokenisation, alongside improving operating efficiencies through the adoption of new technologies such as blockchain.
“We see this [investment] as a massive statement of belief in what we have built at Archax, as well as being a key milestone in our evolution and for the digital/tokenised world as a whole,” said Graham Rodford, chief executive of Archax.
“We look forward to working with abrdn closely to provide a new universe of users with access to our services, as well as creating new innovative tokenised products that will trade on our marketplace.”