TrueDigital Holdings (TDH) today said it has signed an in-principle agreement with swap execution facility trueEX to acquire its Designated Contract Market (DCM) and Swaps Execution Facility (SEF) registrations. trueDigital was a former affiliate of trueEx, which facilitates trading for interest rate swaps.
Pending regulatory approval by the CFTC, TrueDigital announced plans to Leverage trueEX’s approvals to launch a regulated derivatives marketplace for the crypto assets. The certified execution facility will initially list contracts for Bitcoin physically deliverable swaps, while trueDigital Holdings will provide product development, and act as the sales and marketing arm for the new products.
As a registered DCO, trueDigital will be authorized to provide a suite of clearing services for swaps, as well as futures and options on futures contracts subject to the rules of its designated contract market. As such, it would offer market participants the dual benefit of execution and clearing in a CFTC-regulated DCM exchange in addition to their SEF platform.
TrueDigital creates infrastructure for institutional crypto trading
TrueDigital’s already offers crypto price benchmarks that provides institutional-grade resources and real-time information for those trading in cryptocurrency markets through a standardized reference rate and spot price index.
Over ten cryptocurrency exchanges and trading are providing pricing data for TrueDigital’s benchmark, including Genesis Global Trading, XBTO Group, Circle, DV Chain, Hehmeyer, and Altonomy, with more exchanges to be added over time.
The established futures exchanges, including those run by Cboe Global Markets and CME Group, already offer bitcoin futures, but they are cash settled, meaning the actual cryptocurrency does not change hands.
Commenting on the news, trueDigital CEO Thomas Kim said: “This acquisition reflects our goal to be the trusted choice for any institution that wants to trade novel digital asset derivative products through sophisticated infrastructure delivering the same regulatory framework that market participants require of any other asset class. A trueDigital owned and operated regulated exchange is the natural step in our evolution toward achieving our goals. Adding the exchange to our ecosystem delivers a complete end-to-end offering, currently unavailable today, that encompasses tokenization, Payments , market data and settlement for the benefit of our clients and partners.”
