Jamil Nazarali knows what he wants to do at EDX Markets—and what he wants to avoid.
The new crypto exchange, backed by established players in traditional finance like Citadel Securities, Fidelity, and Charles Schwab, is poised to fill a void largely created when FTX blew up and which may expand depending on legal rulings for Binance and Coinbase.
“We deliberately built our business model in a way that avoids some of the problems that the other exchanges are facing right now,” Nazarali, CEO of EDX, told Fortune.
For EDX, this means embracing innovations of the crypto space but also clinging to some of the best practices seen in traditional finance. At the new exchange, launched Tuesday, customers can still trade four cryptocurrencies nearly 24/7, but the exchange will separate the broker, the dealer, and the exchange functions of trading, Nazarali said. And it will not hold retail clients’ money.
