LedgerX, a New York-based institutional trading and clearing platform for digital currencies, has announced that it has received approval to operate the first U.S. federally-regulated exchange and clearing house for derivatives contracts settling in digital currencies.

According to the official release, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) granted LedgerX a Swap Execution Facility (SEF) registration on July 6, 2017.

By a unanimous vote of the Commission, the CFTC has now issued an order granting LedgerX registration as a derivatives clearing organization under the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA). Katten Muchin Rosenman assisted LedgerX during its CFTC application process.

"A U.S. federally-regulated venue for derivative contracts settling in digital currencies opens the market to a much larger customer base," states Paul L. Chou, CEO, LedgerX. "We are seeing strong demand from institutions that previously could not participate in the bitcoin market due to compliance restrictions against unregulated venues. In particular, there is a desire for fund managers to hold financial instruments that are not correlated with the broader equity market, and digital currencies meet that need.”

LedgerX said that it will provide the surveillance and transparency institutional investors require. Eligible participants include registered broker dealers, banks, futures commission merchants, qualified commodity pool entities, and qualified high net worth investors. These participants will be able to obtain and hedge bitcoin and other digital currencies using exchange-traded and centrally-cleared options contracts.

Initially, LedgerX anticipates listing one to six-month options contracts for bitcoin (BTC), which would be followed by other digital currency contracts such as Ethereum (ETH) options.

"These are exciting times to have a new digital asset class emerge," comments Mark Wetjen, who sits on the board of directors for LedgerX's parent company, Ledger Holdings. "I hope that the effort LedgerX put forward in the U.S. can set the stage for a global approach to this new digital asset class.”

FxWirePro launches Absolute Return Managed Program. For more details, visit http://www.fxwirepro.com/invest