Here's what investors may want to know about the EDX Markets launch today

One of the more intriguing recent developments in the crypto world is upon us. Today, EDX Markets announced the successful launch of its digital asset marketplace. This announcement came alongside news that EDX Markets also completed an investment round with key equity partners.

Notably, Fidelity, Charles Schwab (NYSE:SCHW) and Citadel are backing this crypto exchange. Thus, this is a crypto exchange with some key firepower behind the scenes, prompting many investors to at least take a look at what EDX is offering.

What makes EDX different from most exchanges is the fact that this digital asset marketplace doesn’t support trading activities, or retail investors, and doesn’t store customer funds. Thus, EDX is aimed at more influential institutional traders, providing access directly via an application programming interface (API).

This sort of model is one I haven’t seen before — and one I think investors are going to want to look at closely. Let’s dive into what investors may want to make of this new crypto exchange launch.

EDX Markets Is the New Kid On the Block

With so many centralized crypto exchanges under fire, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) clearly taking a hardline approach to such players, it’s an interesting time to bring an exchange public.

On the one hand, there’s certainly less competition out there, particularly in the U.S. And assuming the SEC sticks with its core list of crypto securities it put forward, perhaps this exchange can skirt around the securities regulations, for now.

Currently, EDX offers institutional investors the opportunity to trade only four tokens — Bitcoin (BTC-USD), Bitcoin Cash (BCH-USD), Litecoin (LTC-USD) and Ethereum (ETH-USD). Thus, so long as the consensus opinion of these four major cryptos (that they’re likely commodities and not securities) remains the same, EDX could have found a very nice niche in this space.

On the other hand, regulators in the U.S. continue to throw the book at exchanges peddling what they seem to view are securities to speculators and hard-working individuals. So, we’ll have to see how much (or, preferably, little) attention EDX receives from regulators moving forward.

In either case, this is a crypto exchange to keep an eye on right now. Digital assets are going mainstream, as evidenced by this rather impressive move from three major traditional finance players today.

On the date of publication, Chris MacDonald did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.