Seven Crypto Exchanges Have Approval From Nasdaq

By Rishma Banerjee

Nasdaq, the American stock exchange which is also the second-largest stock exchange in the world by market capitalization, has cryptocurrency exchange guidelines which continue to offer technical support for seven cryptocurrency exchanges. It even pays to use its tech in order to help them ascertain that trading activities are kept free from doctoring and manipulation.

Specialists hired by the company, monitor all exchanges wishing to use the surveillance technology for both technical capability and ethics. So far, only seven crypto exchanges have been able to satisfy Nasdaq’s stringent guidelines. However, only connections with Gemini and SBI Virtual Currency has been made public so far.

Tony Sio, Nasdaq’s head of exchange and regulator surveillance team, elaborated on the company’s stance on allowing access to tech support. He said,

“Historically, we don’t do such a large vetting process for our clients because they are much more well-known… But as we started working with less well-known names, startups, then we realized we needed to do this check process.”

At the briefing yesterday, the company’s surveillance head spoke about the process of vetting crypto exchanges to members of the press, clarifying that not everyone makes the cut. He explained that the prerequisites demanded by Nasdaq were extremely rigorous and have separate criteria: a business model, KYC/AML, and exchange governance and controls.

Nasdaq’s primary interest in this area has been in blockchain. They, in September 2015, joined a 30 million USD investment round in Chain which is a blockchain startup that had partnered with Nasdaq to launch Linq, a private equity platform. As per reports, it was only last week that Nasdaq also collaborated with Symbiont to facilitate a USD 20 million investment.

This stance that has been taken by Nasdaq just reflects the high level of ethical standard exchanges must demonstrate before they can gain access to the technology.