An industry group said on Tuesday that regulated financial exchanges are discussing how to take advantage of the interest in crypto. However, a third of the people who responded to the group’s latest poll said they had no plans to offer the asset class.
A study from the London-based World Federation of Exchanges (WFE) said that exchanges were worried about a lack of uniform regulatory standards, market volatility, and the possibility of cybersecurity risks related to crypto assets.
The WFE’s members include the U.S.-based Nasdaq NDAQ.O, Germany’s Deutsche Boerse DB1Gn.DE, and Switzerland’s SIX Group. Of the 29 exchanges that replied to the WFE’s survey, 12 offer crypto-related goods or services, and 17 do not, the WFE said, without naming the exchanges.
The group said that only seven of those who didn’t have any crypto-related products or services at the moment planned to add them in the future, while ten didn’t.
In 2022, the prices of cryptocurrencies fell after several big crypto firms, including FTX, went bankrupt and caused investors to lose a lot of money; this led lawmakers to call for more regulation.
About 38% of the WFE polled exchanges have or plan to set up working groups that will focus on crypto-related products or services.
The WFE said that just over a quarter of respondents think crypto assets will become popular shortly.
Mainstream financial companies have been interested in blockchain, the technology behind cryptocurrencies, for a long time because they think it could be used to issue and trade traditional financial assets. But the tech has yet to be used on a large scale.
The London Stock Exchange Group LSEG.L said on Monday that it was looking into using blockchain to build a system “to raise and transfer capital across asset classes,” but that this would not involve building anything around crypto assets.
