Currency.com

The founders of Currency.com believe that cryptocurrency holders are ill-served by existing exchanges at present as they can’t access regulated financial markets without swapping coins to fiat. It brings to the situation when traders with cryptocurrencies are devoid of opportunities of trading popular equities, indices, and commodities. The platform plans to fix the problem and provide a one-stop trading hub for them that could give users the possibility to trade skipping that stage when they have to convert crypto to fiat first.

Disconnection of crypto markets from traditional financial markets is a huge problem that doesn’t allow cryptocurrencies to evolve. Lack of direct trading between cryptocurrencies and stocks, indices, and commodities makes the process too complicated. The traders have to convert cryptocurrencies before the deal, transferring money to a different exchange thus wasting time and risking security. However, Currency.com offers all the services mentioned above within one platform.

Currency.com platform

The platform lets its users trade more than 1,300 tokenized securities and wants to increase the assortment. The whitepaper placed on the website says about the planned expansion of the list of supported securities as it’s ultimately going to offer over 10,000 trading instruments. At the moment of writing, it includes the classic cryptocurrencies, top tokenized stock indices such as S&P 500, FTSE 100, EU50, and US100. The users can acquire the tokenized shares of such companies as Netflix, Tesla, Amazon, Coca-Cola, Apple, Google, and others.

Those who want to diversify their investment portfolio with tokenized commodities can purchase Platinum, Gold, Silver, Palladium, Natural Gas, etc. The government bonds include Belarus252/USD at the moment of writing, but other options are coming soon.

When the company was launched, it received 8 million USD in funding from Larnabel Ventures and VP Capital. The platform supports such fiat currencies as USD, EUR, BNY, RUB. There were 150 trading pairs on the exchange at the point of launch.

An award-winning platform was appreciated for speed and simplicity of trading thanks to a powerful engine that is able to perform 50 million operations per second. The exchange offers a margin trading option with up to 200x leverage. Trading on-the-go is also easy with Currency.com. The team has developed apps for Android and iOS handheld devices.

There is a possibility to make direct deposits to the platform from the linked bank account. The flexibility to deposit either fiat or cryptocurrency funds makes the platform convenient to use. Both options are also available for withdrawal, fiat money and crypto-assets. At this, a variable withdrawal fee is charged to cover the expenditures associated with a particular blockchain. The platform charges 1.5% withdrawal fee for tokenized securities as it incurs costs in holding the assets with third-party custodians of the tokens.

Currency.com security

Security is one of the basic advantages of the exchange that takes all possible measures to protect its clients from hackers and the loss of assets. The platform lacks the history of breaches and uses the same security technology as its parent company Capital.com. The servers of the company are safely stored in the LD4 data center, just at the same place where such famous platforms as Nasdaq, London Stock Exchange, and Dow Jones keep their servers.

Cold storage is used for 97% of assets. HTTPS encryption helps to establish a secure transfer of data. Military-grade encryption is employed for storing and protecting private data. Two-factor authentication and regular audits along with purpose-built regulation by the Belarusian authorities make the platform highly secure. The reviewers point out the privacy intrusive verification process.

The company is regulated by Belarusian 8th Decree on Development of Digital Economy, Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission, and the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority. Users have to pass KYC and AML procedures for the protection of data and consumers. The company is also audited by the accounting firm Ernst & Young that enters the “big four”, therefore, the users can be sure of the validity of tokenized securities offered at the exchange.

Though the company is young, it has already acquired trustworthiness thanks to its innovative approach. In 2019, the company was awarded “the Best cryptocurrency exchange CIS”. Additionally, it has received many positive reviews from industry experts. There are still some regulatory hurdles that do not allow residents of some countries to use the platform. It refers, for instance, to the US, the Bahamas, Pakistan, Yemen, Iran, and others. The full list of restricted countries is specified on the website.

Currency.com team

The Minsk-based platform that also has offices in Gibraltar and London includes over 100 employees with a high level of proficiency in the sphere. Their combined experience in such spheres as trading, financial services, and technology exceeded 300 years.

The following figures take the key positions in the company: General Manager (Director) Alexander Schevchenko, the project’s CEO Ivan Gowan who works in the Gibraltar office, Head of Compliance Nigel Crome, Head of Development Dmitry Ogievic, and Head of Project Management Victor Pergament.

Currency.com became the first blockchain business licensed by Minsk’s High Technology Park (HTP). All residents of the HTP receive an exemption from most Belarusian taxes until 2049. Currency.com has filed a series of patents covering new technologies connected with hybrid cryptocurrency exchanges, entity-controlled distributed ledger systems, blockchain-based KYC, AML procedures, and tokenized assets.