Swiss Crypto Exchange SDX Said to Go Live Later This Month

SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) will go live later this month, according to two people familiar with the plans.

An important milestone for SDX, the digital-asset subsidiary of Switzerland’s main stock exchange operator SIX Group, was the receipt of two licenses from Swiss markets regulator FINMA in September.

“SDX is now ready to start operations and they will likely do the first live transactions towards the end of this month,” said one of the people, who has been working closely with SDX.

A go-live date has been a long time coming for SDX, fraught with delays and changes of leadership along the way.

In August SDX announced that David Newns from State Street would take over as CEO after Tim Grant, formerly of R3 Innovation Lab, left to join Galaxy Digital. The SDX project was originally led by Martin Halblaub, who quit in 2019 over strategic differences.

The FINMA approval cleared the way for SDX, which is built using the permissioned Corda architecture supplied by R3, to operate as an integrated trading, settlement and custody infrastructure for digital assets.