Switzerland’s Six Digital Exchange Launches With Blockchain Bond

Six Digital Exchange (SDX), Switzerland’s long-awaited crypto-asset trading venue, has launched with its first live transaction, issuing a 150 million CHF ($162 million) digital bond using blockchain rails.

CoinDesk previously reported that SDX would go live this month, following the receipt of two licenses from Swiss markets regulator FINMA in September. The SDX blockchain bond is the first digital issuance to be done using regulated market infrastructure, according to a press release from parent company SIX.

Credit Suisse, UBS Investment Bank and Zürcher Kantonalbank acted as the joint lead managers on the bond issuance.

“The first issue of a tokenized bond on the SIX Digital Exchange as well as its listing and placement in the market proves that the forward-looking distributed ledger technology (DLT) also works very well in the highly regulated capital market,” said Thomas Zeeb, global head of markets at SIX, in a statement.

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

SDX is built using the permissioned Corda architecture supplied by R3, and operates as an integrated trading, settlement and custody infrastructure for digital assets.

“This is one of the biggest changes we are likely to see in financial market infrastructure in our lifetime,” said Todd McDonald, R3′s co-founder, in a statement. “In fact, if ever there was a David & Goliath moment in the history of capital markets and financial market infrastructure, it’s the birth of Six Digital Exchange.”