Bitcoin Global News (BGN)
April 11, 2019 -- ADVFN Crypto NewsWire -- Will Puerto Rico become
the Malta of the Western Hemisphere? Known for its cryptocurrency
friendly government stance, the small island nation has attracted
numerous cryptocurrency businesses to establish offices on island.
Puerto Rico, on the other side, may be taking preliminary steps
towards this kind of attraction. The island will now be home to the
San Juan Mercantile Bank & Trust International (SJMBT), a a
financial institution catering to cryptocurrency using individuals
and businesses.
The SJMBT is well beyond gaining
licensing or pilot projects - they have already accepted a first
client’s deposit. They were licensed last month as an international
financial entity (IFE) by Puerto Rico’s Office of the Commission of
Financial Institutions (OCIF). On the larger scale, the bank is a
unit of Mercantile Global Holdings (MGH), highlighting the
potential for continued growth for the industry on the
island.
San Juan Mercantile
Exchange (SJMX)
SJMX will be yet another
institutional-grade electronic trading platform for digital assets,
facilitated by SJMBT. The bank will provide custody and settlement
services for both fiat and cryptocurrencies traded on the exchange.
However, SJMBT is not insured by the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance
Corp. (FDIC). The looming presence of a U.S. relationship could
impede cryptocurrency development on the island down the line, as
the country’s president is currently focused on building a wall
along the Mexican border.
This combination of companies,
where custody and trading are held under the same roof will bring
many benefits. The exchange will take into account customer
balances on deposit at the bank when setting trading limits,
allowing the bank to settle trades in real time.
“As more liquidity venues onboard
with SJMX to trade digital assets, SJMBT will provide critical
services, such as real-time settlement and account re-balancing, in
support of our customers’ trading activities.” - Nick Varelakis,
president and chief operating officer of SJMB&T.
Coming From
Experience
MGH’s leadership includes veterans
of well-known financial companies. Nick Varelakis is a former
executive director of JPMorgan Chase for business architecture and
transformation, and COO of Puerto Rico’s Noble Bank ( the company
behind the Tether stablecoin). The MGH bank and exchange were
founded a year ago by J. Robert Collins Jr., former president of
the New York Mercantile Exchange, and a founder of the Dubai
Mercantile Exchange.
“You have an account [on Coinbase]
and you want to trade on Kraken, right? [But your trade] has to go
across some other external network, either a wire system or the
blockchain and make its way to offset your capital requirements of
both those exchanges. What it allows the traders to do is on my
screen, they can trade CME futures, CBOE futures and my cash…There
will be what we call a Central Limit Order Book, you see all the
orders, time priced priority.” - J. Robert Collins Jr
By: BGN Editorial Staff