Gibraltar’s Official Cryptocurrency Exchange is Open to the Public

The Gibraltar Blockchain Exchange’s Digital Asset Exchange is now live and open to the public, according to an official press release.

Six cryptocurrencies

It has begun trading with six cryptocurrencies – Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum Classic, and Rock Token (RKT). This last is the exchange’s own token, the sale of which raised it $27 million during its own ICO. Approximately 3,500 people bought the tokens. It currently has a market capitalisation of $31.2 million, according to coinmarketcap.com.

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The launch follows a test run in June in which 300 people used the service and gave feedback.

The exchange also advertising a couple of promotions on its website to get things going – trading is fee-less until the 14th of September, and there will soon be a trading competition with a prize pool of 1 million RKT ($79,441).

GBX CEO Nick Cowan said: “Today marks the most exciting development on the GBX journey thus far and is a significant indication that Gibraltar is open for business.”

About the GBX

The Gibraltor Blockchain Exchange, or GBX to its friends, is both a cryptocurrency exchange and marketplace for initial coin offerings. The ICO part was launched in February.

The GBX vets ICOs according to guidelines which were published in March. These include the enforcement of accurate advertising and a sponsor programme which requires that all prospective projects find themselves an independent sponsor who must submit to the GBX for approval.

That month, Cowan told the Financial Times that the exchange had already been approached by “up to 200 applicants”. In July, the exchange announced its third accepted ICO project – Crowdvilla, a company that sells timeshares in holiday homes represented as tokens on a blockchain. The company’s sponsor was an ICO consultancy firm called ICOMain.io, which also sponsored the GBX during its own token sale.

Exchange regulations

Regarding exchange regulations, the aforementioned guidelines state that they will be in accordance with EU financial law “so far as is appropriate, proportionate and relevant.”

This means that the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission relied on MiFID II to write its rules. In accordance with this, users must complete KYC requirements – meaning, confirm their identities – before using the service.

Gibraltar actually began examining the topic of cryptocurrency regulation in 2014 when it created a cryptocurrency committee. In October 2017 it committed to writing laws by 2018, and true to its word published nine ‘regulatory principles’ on the 3rd of January.