Bitfinex, the fifth-largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by 24-hour trading volume, has just announced on its official blog and on Twitter that it has launched trading for two more cryptocurrencies: Verge (XVG) and Stellar (XLM).
According to the Bitfinex’s blog, XVG “will be tradeable against BTC, ETH and USD… Margin trading and P2P funding will be enabled gradually, as and when the order books develops liquidity.”
As for XLM, it “will be tradeable against BTC, ETH and USD… Margin trading and P2P funding will be enabled gradually, as and when the order books develops liquidity.”
Bitfinex, which was founded in 2012, is currently based in Hong Kong (with its parent company iFinex based in the British Virgin Islands). However, there are reports that it is planning to move from Hong Kong to Switzerland. According to the Swiss news outlet Handelszeitung, Bitfinex CEO, Jean-Louis van der Velde, had this to say about the planned move to Switzerland:
We are looking for a new home for Bitfinex and the parent company iFinex, where we want to merge the operations previously spread over several locations…
We want to be the most transparent of all exchanges and meet the requirements of the Swiss regulator.
The decision to move out of Hong Kong must have been influenced by pressure from the Hong Kong financial regulator, the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), which, according to Reuters, said on 9 February 2018 that it would crackdown on crypto exchanges that are operating there without a license or those that break local securities’ law.
Featured image credit: “Hong Kong Skyline” by “Jo Schmaltz” is licensed under CC BY 2.0
