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Gibraltar Financial Services Commission (GFSC) has made an in-principle decision to grant Lendingblock authorisation as a distributed ledger technology (DLT) provider.
According to Lendingblock, the in-principle authorisation comes simultaneously with the firm’s successful completion of its platform testing period, which was conducted over 30 institutions worldwide.
This puts the firm well on track to launch the world’s first institutional digital assets lending exchange as a fully regulated DLT provider early in the new year, it was revealed.
Following this in-principle decision and the successful testing period, the Lendingblock platform is open for institutional onboarding in preparation for launch.
Market participants are now able to sign up for access and will be able to commence borrowing and lending BTC, ETC, BCH and LTC across various maturities from early next year.
Meanwhile, Lendingblock will continue to collaborate closely with GFSC as it works towards being granted the full DLT licence.
Additionally, the firm is also in discussion with several other regulators globally to ensure that the exchange meets its strategic aim to operate on a duly licenced basis for all territories in which it operates.
Steve Swain, CEO and co-founder of Lendingblock, commented: “As a true believer in the importance of getting our industry into regulatory shape, seeking authorisation from a leading regulator was always a priority for us.”
“The GFSC has developed one of the most advanced DLT regulatory frameworks in the world and this in-principle decision is a tremendous achievement.”
He added: “Securities lending is an important aspect of most traditional market participants’ return generating strategy and we see it as a particularly relevant to the crypto economy. Our technology and collaborative work with regulators and partners have enabled us to create the market and financial infrastructure needed to meet the demand for trading digital assets on an institutional level.”
