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After nearly two years of testing and development, AAX has finally launched. AAX is a Hong Kong-based crypto exchange platform that is powered by the London Stock Exchange (LSE)’s matching engine technology. The service is now green for web and mobile users, offering trading on spot, futures and over-the-counter peer-to-peer to retail and institutional investors.
What’s more, AAX believes that the derivatives market will play a vital role with its bitcoin-settled perpetual contract futures offering. These contracts are grounded on five cryptocurrencies: bitcoin, ether,litecoin, EOS, and ripple. Traders can use these contracts for up to 100 times leverage, CoinDesk reported.
With the LSE’s Millennium Exchange matching engine, AAX boasts that settlements of future trades can be concluded within 0.0005 seconds. LSEG Technology’s CIO Ann Neidenbach said this marks the first time that the matching engine has been used on the cloud, a point of pride for everyone involved in the project.
AAX confident of its service
“LSEG Technology is delighted to have successfully deployed our world-class matching engine capabilities at AAX. This is the first time that Millennium Exchange has been deployed in the cloud, bringing its, scalability, flexibility, reliability and seamless direct market access to AAX,” Niedenbach said.
AAX’s launching comes just a day after Hong Kong mandated all exchanges that are dealing with security tokens to get a license from the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC). The SFC revealed that any businesses that offer or trade futures contracts are subject to scrutiny by the regulatory body, with added monitoring even after the license has been issued.
AAX willing to work with the SFC amidst new regulation
The agency said that one of the main priorities of crypto exchanges should be to conduct a thorough background check to each of their clients to identify any illicit actors. Fears of money laundering and terrorist financing have been one of the major reasons why governments are cracking down on crypto exchanges. The SFC said that they have yet to provide a single license to any crypto exchanges operating in the country, adding that the only ones who are exempted from these rules are those that are offering non-security products.
In response to this new regulation, AAX said that they are open to receiving guidelines from the SFC and are studying their own products to identify if they fall within this new restriction. It remains to be seen whether or not AAX has violated any laws placed by the SFC and it would be interesting to see how this new regulation will affect Hong Kong-based crypto exchanges moving forward.
