London Stock Exchange Group Unit to Clear Bitcoin Index Futures, Options

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LCH, the clearinghouse arm of the London Stock Exchange Group, will offer clearing services for cash-settled bitcoin (BTC) index futures and options, the company said in a statement Thursday.

The separate service LCH DigitalAssetClear, part of the company's French arm, will finalize trades made on GFO-X, a U.K.-regulated digital asset exchange, LCH said.

“Bitcoin index futures and options are a rapidly growing asset class,” Frank Soussan, head of LCH DigitalAssetClear, said in a statement, citing “increasing interest among institutional market participants looking for access within a regulated environment they are familiar with.”

Clearinghouses offer a centralized venue in which to finalize trades that are agreed on an exchange. Since the 2008 financial crisis, they have been favored by regulators as a way to lessen the risk of separate bilateral deals among players such as investment banks.

The move represents the latest foray by traditional finance players into the crypto market. In March, the Stuttgart stock exchange secured a crypto custody license from German regulator BaFin, and Brussels-based clearinghouse Euroclear has said it will soon be ready to launch a bond settlement platform based on crypto-style distributed ledger technology.

Read more: Bye-bye Brokers: EU Tries Stock Trading, the Web3 Way