Seychelles is looking to become Africa’s first and world’s first country to list a regulated security token on a national stock market.
The MERJ Exchange Ltd, which went live in August of 2013, has about 31 securities listed with a market capitalization of $325M. It is the only licensed securities exchange in the Republic of Seychelles. It is responsible for establishing and administering rules for the listing, trading, clearing, and settlement of securities and other financial instruments.
According to the exchange website:
“MERJ EXCHANGE is an innovative end to end, multi-market global financial exchange for equities, debt, and derivatives. MERJ is adding markets for security tokens, digital assets, and hybrids of the same in H1 2019.”
The exchange further states that it ‘operates the entire end-to-end exchange and post trade infrastructure, covering exchange, clearing, settlement, registry and depository services.”
This unique setup and close collaboration with regulators has built trust enabling MERJ to be an innovator and global leader in the exchange space.
MERJ Exchange vision and roadmap is as follows:
- Primary/Secondary markets, clearing, settlement, registry / depository.
- Global deal promotion, issuance and distribution platform for complaint global securities token offerings.
- All cross listings from global issuers.
- Direct participation and access to exchange and post trade for global participants.
- Fully-fledged national securities exchange.
- Interoperability with other global markets to support cross listings
- Ownership registers and immutable cap tables maintained on the Ethereum distributed ledger.
- Multi-asset – Equity, debt, and derivative securities, including securities tokens, digital assets and hybrid instruments.
- Multi-currency settlement in major fiat, stable coins and major cryptocurrencies.
- 24/5 trading and processing, with 24/7 extension in the future.
Seychelles lies at the heart of the old Indian Ocean trade routes which were traversed by Asian, Arab and African traders for centuries. In addition, its modern international financial services portfolio, fiber optic connectivity, forward thinking regulators, and low taxes makes it the ideal location to operate a modern global tokenized exchange.
Pioneering the next generation of global financial markets leveraging blockchain technology will no doubt position Seychelles as a first truly global financial market ecosystem.
What is a Security Token?
Security tokens represent complete or fractional ownership in an asset (such as shares in a company, a real-estate asset, artwork, etc). Having a stake in a company, real estate, or intellectual property can all be represented by security tokens. Security tokens offer the benefit of bringing significant transparency over traditional paper shares through the use of the blockchain and its associated public ledger. Security token structure, distribution, or changes that could affect investors are now accessible to all via the blockchain.
Tokenized stocks are shares in a business in the form of digital assets such as cryptocoins. Blockchain technology, which underpins cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, allow the easy transfer of these assets between buyers and sellers.
