EDXM International, the offshore arm of Citadel Securities-backed crypto exchange EDX Markets, has launched a new digital assets futures platform. The new venue will target institutional players outside the U.S., stepping deeper into a market that remains bruised but increasingly orderly after years of volatility and scandal.
Operating out of Singapore and plugged into Tokyo’s TY3 data centre, the platform went live this week with 44 perpetual futures pairs including bitcoin, ether, solana and XRP. The move signals EDXM’s intent to rival more entrenched players like Binance and CME Group in the lucrative derivatives trade.
The platform is targeting hedge funds, family offices, and proprietary trading firms across Asia-Pacific and beyond, offering low-latency execution, central clearing, and a so-called “smart collateral management” system. The latter lets market makers quote across multiple contracts while holding less capital, which is a crucial efficiency pitch in an era of tighter margins.
“This is about giving institutions the infrastructure they expect from traditional finance – without the crypto circus,” one executive familiar with the matter told Reuters.
EDX Markets was founded in 2022 with backing from some of Wall Street’s most influential names, including Citadel Securities, Fidelity Digital Assets, Charles Schwab, and Virtu Financial. Its core pitch is to bring regulated, non-custodial, and transparent crypto trading to the institutional crowd. Since launching spot trading in mid‑2023, the firm has cleared over $36 billion in volume and added retail-favorite tokens like dogecoin and shiba inu.
The international arm, EDXM, was quietly assembled last year with an eye on jurisdictional flexibility. Singapore and Japan – where the new exchange infrastructure is based – offer regulatory clarity that the U.S. still lacks, particularly for perpetual futures, which remain heavily restricted under U.S. law.
Backing for the launch includes a cadre of heavyweight liquidity providers: Virtu Financial, Amber Group, DV Chain, CoinRoutes, Hidden Road, and LTP. EDXM’s use of MEMX’s matching engine – the same tech underpinning U.S. equities markets – is another nod to its TradFi lineage.
While the broader crypto derivatives space has cooled from its 2021 highs, institutional appetite appears to be quietly returning, especially as capital allocators regain confidence following the collapse of FTX and the regulatory clampdowns that followed.
Though EDXM operates independently, its DNA traces straight back to Citadel Securities, one of the world’s most dominant market makers. Citadel’s fingerprints are increasingly visible across the digital asset ecosystem — from its involvement in EDX, to backing new U.S. exchanges like the Texas Stock Exchange, to aggressively recruiting crypto-native engineers.
