GMEX Launches Digital MultiHub

GMEX MultiHub, a new business unit of the GMEX Group, has announced the launch of Digital MultiHub, a cloud-enabled trading and post-trade digital market infrastructure platform which facilitates third party trading and post-trade services across traditional and digital asset markets.

Delivered through a Platform-as-a-Service, microservices distribution model, MultiHub enables capital markets participants to gain simple access to regulated digital assets and market infrastructure, the firm says.

Digital assets are becoming increasingly relevant in capital markets portfolios, GMEX says, citing recent research from Fidelity Digital Assets which found 84% of US and European institutional investors are interested in purchasing institutional investment products that hold digital assets. A lack of standards, platform interoperability and time to market challenges remain, however, across multiple blockchains and traditional infrastructure., the firm adds, claiming MultiHub addresses this fragmentation, providing “a faster and safe clearing and settlement solution for hybrid digital and traditional trading”.

MultiHub provides global access to turnkey digital asset exchange, custody, and governance solutions. The platform facilitates credit allocation and checking, collateral management and margin trading, order routing, netting and settlement across multiple trading venues, custodians and participants.

To develop MultiHub, GMEX worked with AWS and with Luxoft as a development partner, to implement and deploy the platform, which is powered by AWS Cloud and core ledger technology. AWS and GMEX jointly developed the business case, and together created a go-to-market plan.

Other initial partners and customers include: Trustology, a UK FCA registered digital asset custodian incubated and backed by Consensys and also backed by Two Sigma Ventures; GCEX, a regulated UK based traditional and digital assets broker; SECDEX Group, a Seychelles licensed securities, commodities and derivatives exchange; and Arabian Bourse, an Abu Dhabi Global Market based crypto asset exchange and custodian.

“MultiHub is a unique multi-asset network of networks service that enables cross-venue, cross-participant trading, clearing and settlement of both traditional and digital assets with a single point of connectivity for both industries, which negates the need to integrate across venues,” says GMEX Group CEO, Hirander Misra. “This complements our mission to cost-effectively drive the accelerated institutional take-up of digital assets by making it easier to trade, clear, settle and pledge them alongside traditional assets, heralding the new age of Exchange 4.0.”

Alex Batlin, founder & CEO of Trustology, adds, “This marks a significant move in capital markets. The GMEX MultiHub will drive digital transformation within the space and at the same time allows for accelerated execution and custody for institutional players as they get into or scale their digital assets activity.”

Lars Holst, CEO of GCEX, a digital assets broker, says, “I am now able to have a broader range of customers access our execution capabilities more efficiently and am able to convert that gain in velocity to an increase in liquidity confidence for our partners and their customers within the GMEX MultiHub community.”

GMEX says it chose to build MultiHub on AWS Cloud so that it could benefit from a diverse array of tools and harness reliable, scalable and highly secure infrastructure. Using AWS also ensures that the solution is flexible, easy to access and cost effective.

“The portability of digital assets has become an increasing challenge impacting trading and volumes,” says Anoop Nannra, global blockchain lead at AWS. “GMEX MultiHub makes it easier for customers to access, trade and settle digital assets with a reduced carbon footprint, compared to trades that use the blockchain. This is because digital assets can be pledged by custodians without moving onto a blockchain. That alone means that the carbon created by the trade is far reduced when compared to trades that use the blockchain which is compute intensive.”

Finally, Hugh Richards, MD, products & solutions at Luxoft, says, “As institutions increasingly adopt digital assets as part of their digital transformation agenda, the need for hybrid (both traditional and digital) settlement and custody solutions is required to simplify this adoption.  Luxoft is pleased to be the development support partner for GMEX MultiHub, responding to the increasing demand for such decentralised trading solutions.”