The BPX digital securities marketplace is built for liquidity and scale

• BPX is a UK regulated digital asset platform that will launch soon, offering asset management, issuance, trading, settlement and custody services on a full-service or modular basis

• The initial focus at BPX is on alternative assets and alternative asset funds as the markets where more immediate value can be delivered than in traditional equity and debt markets

• BPX believes collateralised lending of assets listed and trades on its platform will add vital liquidity by making it easier to finance them or raise finance against them.

At the turn of the century a disruptive alternative trading platform called Chi-X competed successfully with the established stock exchanges for order flow by cutting transaction costs dramatically. Blockchain technology has promised a similar revolution for more than a decade but failed conspicuously to deliver. The founders of BPX Digital Securities Marketplace, the digital securities marketplace licensed by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in June 2025, believe they have found a way to fulfil that promise. By offering users a complete set of services – asset management, issuance, secondary market trading, settlement and custody - BPX aims to cut time, cost and risk at every point where transactional data is shared. Importantly, by also offering collateralised lending, the creators of BPX believe they can unlock the missing liquidity that has bedevilled digital asset trading platforms. Dominic Hobson, co-founder of Future of Finance, asked Ali Celiker, founder and CEO of BPX, why he thinks BPX can succeed where other digital asset exchanges have struggled.

Ali Celiker Founder and CEO of BPX

DH: Why is now a good time and London a good place to be launching a digital assets exchange?

AC: Because three forces are converging at the same time: regulation, institutional demand and market structure change.

Digital assets have moved beyond experimentation. Institutions are no longer looking for unregulated access or speculative infrastructure. They want regulated venues, recognised governance, institutional-grade custody, robust settlement and clear accountability.

This is where London has a real advantage. The UK’s regulatory regime is deep, demanding and increasingly relevant to digital market infrastructure. Securing Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) permissions for activities such as trading, custody and asset management is a high-bar process. It requires time, capital, governance maturity and operational resilience. That creates a structural moat: it limits credible entrants while reinforcing trust among institutional participants.

London also remains one of the world’s deepest capital markets centres. It brings together the buy-side, sell-side, legal advisers, fund administrators, custodians, structuring specialists, regulators and policymakers in one ecosystem. That concentration matters when building market infrastructure that must be trusted by institutions from day one.

The UK’s approach is also pragmatic. Initiatives such as the Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS) allow regulated firms to test new market infrastructure in live conditions, rather than waiting for a perfect theoretical framework before innovation can begin.

So the timing is right because the technology is now mature enough, the regulatory framework is clearer, and the market increasingly understands that tokenisation is not about avoiding existing standards. It is about rebuilding them with greater automation, transparency and efficiency.

DH: You have secured trading, asset management and custody licences from the FCA. Why do you need to do everything in-house?

AC: Customers are not required to use every BPX service. Our model is not about doing everything in-house for its own sake; it is about giving customers access to an efficient, compliant and integrated securities marketplace where they can choose the services they need.

Markets are entering a new digital era, and existing operating models are being challenged. BPX has been established to support the full lifecycle of digital securities, from primary issuance through to secondary trading, custody and collateralised lending. Having these capabilities within one regulated group allows us to design end-to-end workflows that are simpler, faster, more cost-effective and lower risk for issuers, investors, lenders, buy-side firms and sell-side firms.

Our services are modular. Customers can use BPX as a full-service solution or select individual services from a menu.

For example, an issuer may only want to admit a security or fund unit to our secondary and repo markets to improve liquidity, without using BPX for fund management or primary issuance. An investor may prefer to maintain their existing custody relationship rather than use BPX custody services. A real estate company, by contrast, may want to establish a fund, issue securities, distribute them to investors, enable secondary trading and use custody services through BPX.

Our core services are primary issuance, secondary trading and collateralised lending. Other services, including asset management and custody, are supporting capabilities that help make these core market functions more effective where customers choose to use them.

In summary, this is not about BPX wanting to do everything. It is about creating a regulated digital market infrastructure that gives customers flexibility, reduces operational complexity, improves time and cost efficiency, and creates real value across the securities lifecycle.

DH: Do users have to buy every service or can they choose third parties?

AC: They can choose third parties. The integrated model is there to remove friction, not to force dependency.

Some clients will want a full-service BPX workflow: issuance, trading, custody, settlement and potentially collateralised lending. Others will already have preferred custodians, fund administrators, banks, brokers or technology providers.

Our aim is to be modular. We want BPX to become a regulated marketplace that participants can connect to in the way that fits their operating model, provided the third party meets the necessary regulatory, technical and risk standards.

The important point is that interoperability must not compromise market integrity. We are open architecture where it is safe and commercially useful, and integrated where it is necessary to provide institutional certainty.

DH: Why are you not offering clearing?

AC: In many of the markets we are targeting initially, particularly private markets and alternative assets, the core problem is not central counterparty clearing. The problem is access, standardisation, transferability, settlement efficiency, custody and secondary liquidity.

Clearing becomes more relevant as markets become larger, more standardised and more intermediated.

We are not ruling it out as the market evolves, but we do not believe launching a clearing house is the right starting point for the asset classes we are initially addressing.

Our priority is to make issuance, trading, settlement and custody work in a regulated, scalable and institutionally acceptable way.

DH: You will offer collateralised lending. Does this reflect your fixed income background?

AC: Yes, partly. My background in short-term rates trading gives me a strong understanding and appreciation of collateral, liquidity, repo-style financing, risk management and the importance of balance sheet efficiency.

One of the major advantages of tokenised securities is that they can make collateral more transparent, programmable and operationally efficient. If ownership, eligibility, transfer restrictions and settlement status can be represented digitally, then financing against those assets becomes much easier to manage.

Collateralised lending is not an add-on to the strategy. It is part of the liquidity architecture. Many alternative assets are illiquid not only because there is no secondary market, but because holders cannot easily finance, pledge or mobilise them. If we can improve that, we can improve the economics of holding these assets.

DH: Your initial focus is tokenised alternative assets, which have underperformed relative to logic and expectations. What makes you confident you can make the sector work?

AC: I am not sure I would characterise alternative assets as having underperformed. Our focus is on improving access to, and liquidity in, alternative assets, where there is both a clear market shortcoming and a significant opportunity.

Access and liquidity are our north star. We are confident that the steps we are taking will help bring greater access and liquidity to alternative assets.

Alternative assets such as real estate, infrastructure, and private credit are often held through private investment funds. The private nature of these funds is a major contributor to illiquidity. By hosting these funds within the BPX marketplace, they gain access to secondary trading mechanisms, with a choice of execution models, including CLOB, RFQ and auction mechanisms, and a collateralised lending market. This creates an operational environment designed to help foster liquidity.

From there, the priority is to attract a diverse range of market participants with different trading motivations to the marketplace. Over time, we would expect liquidity to build as BPX establishes itself as the go-to venue for compliant trading in alternative assets.

DH: You want to serve traditional as well as digital assets. Does that mean you will take on the traditional equity and debt markets?

AC: Our focus is not on traditional equity and debt markets. There are established players offering excellent services in these markets. Although efficiency gains can be achieved across all markets through the introduction of blockchain-based workflows, we are focused on assets where the existing market structure is most inefficient and underserved, and where we can add immediate and clearly measurable value for market participants.

That said, you would be hard-pressed to find an independent marketplace with BPX’s breadth of integrated services and the regulatory permissions required to support both traditional and tokenised securities. As an early mover, we are therefore well placed to support a range of different opportunities such as tokenised money market funds and the DIGIT.

DH: Do you expect the cash leg of transactions to be handled by the conventional banking system or stablecoins?

AC: We expect both models to coexist for some time.

For many institutional users, the starting point will be conventional banking rails because that is where treasury, compliance and operational processes already sit. Bank money remains the default settlement asset for most regulated securities activity.

However, Stablecoins, tokenised deposits and central bank money are important because they will help users experience the full utility of blockchain. On-chain securities delivery versus on-chain money is the most efficient model, as it reduces settlement friction.

The challenge is not simply technical; it is regulatory, legal and operational. The market needs confidence in the issuer, redemption rights, reserves, settlement finality and prudential treatment.

Our approach is pragmatic. We will support the settlement methods that are regulated, robust and acceptable to institutional participants. We do not believe the industry should be ideological about the cash leg. It should use the safest and most efficient settlement asset available for the relevant use case.

DH: What has joining the Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS) done for you?

AC: The Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS) is important because it brings innovation into the regulatory perimeter.

It is an excellent programme that demonstrates the government’s commitment to upgrading the UK’s financial market infrastructure (FMI) for the new digital era.

For BPX, it provides a structured way to test digital securities market infrastructure with the Bank of England and FCA, and to engage with questions that matter in live markets: settlement finality, custody, governance, operational resilience, record-keeping, interoperability and investor protection.

It also gives institutional participants confidence. They can see that this is not an offshore experiment or an unregulated crypto venue. It is a UK-regulated market infrastructure project being developed in dialogue with the authorities.

Perhaps most importantly, the DSS helps close the gap between policy and implementation. Tokenisation will not become mainstream through white papers. It will become mainstream when regulated firms prove, in live conditions, that the new infrastructure works.

DH: What makes you think you can succeed in building scale where SDX, Archax, ADDX, INX and others have struggled?

AC: Many of those firms have played an important role in proving that regulated digital asset infrastructure is possible. However, the market has clearly taken longer to mature than many hoped.

Our view is that success depends on more than licensing or technology alone. It requires the right asset focus, regulatory positioning, institutional workflow design and, critically, market timing. Timing may be the most important factor. BPX is being built at the point where institutional demand, regulatory clarity and market infrastructure evolution are converging.

That convergence is already reflected in early institutional alignment, including membership from established financial institutions such as Investec, which provides tangible evidence of market engagement and supports the view that BPX is aligned with real institutional operating requirements rather than a theoretical future model.

The key distinction is design philosophy. Rather than starting as a crypto-native venue evolving toward institutional standards, BPX is being built from the outset as a regulated market infrastructure platform, with institutional-grade issuance, trading, settlement, custody and collateralised lending integrated into a single ecosystem.

This matters because liquidity is not created by listing instruments alone. It is created by connecting asset supply, investor demand, operational certainty and financing utility within a trusted regulatory framework. That is the gap we are focused on addressing.

DH: Are Euroclear CREST, ClearToken, Archax, HSBC Orion and JPMorgan Kinexys competitors?

AC: That is not how we view these companies. They are all part of the same emerging ecosystem. Euroclear CREST is core UK market infrastructure. HSBC Orion and JPMorgan Kinexys are examples of major financial institutions building digital asset capabilities. Archax is a regulated digital securities venue. ClearToken is addressing important post-trade infrastructure questions.

Yes, there will be areas of overlap, but digital capital markets will not be built by one platform. They will require interoperable venues, custodians, banks, settlement systems, asset managers and service providers.

We see their efforts as validation. The fact that major institutions are investing in this area confirms that the direction of travel is real. Our focus is on where BPX can be distinctive: a UK FCA-authorised institutional marketplace for traditional and tokenised alternative securities, with integrated trading, custody, settlement and financing capabilities, serving issuers, investors and lenders.

DH: How are you funding the business?

AC: So far, we have been supported by individuals and family offices with deep capital markets expertise, who recognise both that the evolution of capital markets is happening now and the opportunity that lies ahead for BPX, given our market positioning.

Moving forward, we are seeking support from institutional investors, especially those actively investing in financial market infrastructure.

DH: Which blockchain protocol have you chosen and why?

AC: Our approach is not to make the protocol the headline. Institutions care about security, resilience, privacy, scalability, governance, interoperability and regulatory acceptability. The protocol is important, but it is a means to an end.

We have designed BPX to be protocol-aware rather than protocol-religious. The market is still evolving, and different assets or settlement models may require different technical configurations.

The criteria are clear: the technology must support institutional-grade issuance, transfer restrictions, permissioning, auditability, settlement workflows, custody integration and future interoperability. It must also be capable of meeting regulatory expectations around operational resilience and control.

We will say more about the specific technical stack as we approach launch, but our principle is simple: choose infrastructure that serves the market structure, not infrastructure that forces the market to adapt to a particular blockchain ideology.

DH: How important to your strategy is interoperability with other exchanges, platforms, networks and blockchains?

AC: It is central.

A digital securities market that creates new silos has missed the point. One of the promises of tokenisation is better connectivity between issuance, trading, custody, settlement, collateral and asset servicing. But that only works if platforms can interoperate with existing financial infrastructure and, over time, with each other.

That does not mean uncontrolled openness. Regulated markets need permissioning, standards, risk controls and accountability. But it does mean that BPX cannot be a closed island.

We need to connect with banks, custodians, brokers, asset managers, administrators, data providers and other venues. We also need to support future cross-chain or multi-network models where they are safe and useful.

Interoperability is not a technical slogan. It is a market structure requirement.

DH: When do you expect to go live?

We are working towards launch in phases rather than a single “big bang” event.

The priority is to go live with the right regulatory, operational and institutional foundations in place. That means onboarding the right members, issuers and service providers; completing the necessary testing; and ensuring the market operates safely from day one.

We have already made significant progress by attaining essential, hard-to-acquire FCA authorisations, advancing our DSS work and building institutional engagement. The next step is controlled market launch with selected participants and assets, followed by broader scaling as liquidity, connectivity and product coverage develop.

We will provide a more specific launch timeline when the remaining technical and participant-readiness milestones are complete. For a regulated market infrastructure business, credibility matters more than speed.