Bitfinex hires Giles Dixon to obtain regulatory approval and licensing across jurisdictions

Rick Steves

The race for regulatory approval and licensing within the crypto trading industry is on.

Bitfinex has appointed Giles Dixon as Head of Licensing, where he will be in charge of the digital token trading platform’s plans to obtain regulatory approval and licensing across a variety of global jurisdictions.

Giles Dixon has a wealth of experience in the field of regulatory compliance, having previously served as a Senior Manager at Grant Thornton LLP in Toronto.

At Grant Thornton, he led the virtual asset risk advisory practice at the accountancy and advisory firm, where he specialized in areas relating to regulation and risk.

Giles Dixon, Head of Licensing at Bitfinex, commented: “As a leading digital token exchange, Bitfinex faces a changing regulatory environment as jurisdictions across the globe adapt to the evolving digital token economy. I look forward to helping to guide the licensing strategy at Bitfinex in such a dynamic and evolving regulatory landscape.”

Bitfinex gains access to SEPA payments

In April, Bitfinex partnered with fiat on-ramp provider OpenPayd. The partnership enables Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) payments for euro-denominated deposits and withdrawals. SEPA instant is a more efficient and obviously faster means to transfer Euros, which Bitfinex anticipates will grow their transactional base much faster than the use of SWIFT.

OpenPayd’s BaaS platform includes many features specifically designed for digital asset businesses. Among other things, it allows them to automate the process of receiving fiat deposits and initiating fiat withdrawals from and to their customers via SEPA, SEPA Instant and SWIFT.

Crucially, with Bitfinex having access to the SEPA Instant payment scheme, its customers are now able to top up their fiat wallets in real time. This also provides additional options for Bitfinex customers to deploy euros onto the platform and have the ability to pay-in and pay-out from their accounts near-instantly.

In addition, OpenPayd’s virtual IBANs can be directly embedded into their customer platforms’’ back end, which helps reduce reconciliation errors and significantly speeds up the payment processing time.

Portuguese language on Bitfinex

The crypto trading platform has also recently added a Portuguese version of its educational content to offer the same level of opportunity among Bitfinex clients to better understand digital tokens and blockchain.

The crypto exchange has also launched a Financial Information eXchange (FIX) gateway amid a surge in demand for high-speed connectivity among the exchange’s growing user base.

The message routing service using the FIX protocol will be adopted by the cryptocurrency exchange to enable institutional customers to use their existing FIX infrastructure in order to connect to the Bitfinex platform.

The introduction of FIX will prevent bottlenecks on the platform, particularly during episodes of high levels of volatility, thereby enhancing overall levels of latency and performance on the platform.

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