Hamilton Trades Derivatives for Digital Currency

Steve Hamilton, the former COO of the London Stock Exchange’s interest rate derivatives market, CurveGlobal, has joined Archax as head of regulation. The start-up plans to launch a digital securities exchange in mid-2019. 

“What interested me about Archax is that the project here is not to create a platform for trading cryptocurrencies per se, but rather to build an institutional-grade platform, based in London and fully regulated here by the FCA [Financial Conduct Authority] as an MTF [multilateral trading facility], focussed on digital securities,” Hamilton says.

“This isn’t new regulation for new financial instruments, although I am firmly of the belief that this will come given the retail involvement in the space, instead just using a new technology to solve real-world, real-economy issues, like raising capital and increasing liquidity in the financial instruments that the industry is comfortable with.”

Archax’s plans are to tokenize real-world assets using a blockchain through security token offerings, which means they have intrinsic value and generally fall under existing regulations. 

“For Archax the key relevant UK primary legislation will be the Regulated Activities Order 2001 and the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000—both existing regulations. In terms of potential new regulation that may come to the market, I would point to the House of Commons Treasury Committee report on crypto-assets, particularly the conclusions and recommendations of the report. The work that goes on here with politicians, regulators and the industry in shaping how future possible regulation will impact the future of crypto will be extremely interesting, and I look forward to playing some part in the conversation,” Hamilton says. 

Archax is also planning its own security token offering, which it will use to tokenise a portion of its own equity.

Prior to CurveGlobal, Hamilton was trading business manager at DRW Trading Group and a senior associate at the Financial Services Authority, the forerunner to the FCA.