Digix & CEZEX: Southeast Asia’s digital asset landscape heats up with the latest partnership…

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Digix Official Blog

4 min readJul 26, 2019

Digix & CEZEX: Southeast Asia’s digital asset landscape heats up with the latest partnership between CEZEX and Digix

Friday, 26 July 2019 — Digix announces its strategic partnership with Singapore-based Cezex.io Digital Exchange, a fully regulated and compliant market exchange that obtained a license from CEZA (a special economic zone in the Philippines) for listing and trading of digital assets. This partnership encompasses the listing of DGX, Digix’s gold-backed token as well as DGD, Digix’s governance token on the CEZEX platform, thereby expanding the smart asset company’s burgeoning influence in Southeast Asia.

Strengthening Southeast Asia’s Digital Assets Network

CEZEX is the first fully licensed overseas virtual crypto exchange that is authorized to operate a “Security Token and Asset-Backed Token Exchange” as issued by Cagayan Economic Zone Authority (“CEZA”), the Philippine government-controlled corporation tasked to manage and supervise the Cagayan semi-autonomous region. CEZEX is operating a unified platform for traders, brokers and issuers to list and trade under a fully regulated and compliant market exchange. Under the license, CEZEX is permitted to allow for trading of any asset class (securities, commodities, derivatives, currencies, metals, etc.).

CEZEX aim is to create a more structured market environment for listing and trading digital assets, as well as support the development of the digital asset industry (in Southeast Asia) into a more professional, structured, efficient and sustainable sector. This core objective for CEZEX is very much in line with Digix and shared vision for bridging the gap between traditional financial markets and cryptocurrency markets by providing market participants access to tokenized markets through the operation of a regulated market. Through a more closely engaged business relationship, CEZEX and Digix are prone to facilitate the accelerated integration of global markets.

CEZEX was established with the support of CEZA and forms part of the Philippine government’s wider initiative to establish a startup hub for Fintech and blockchain-related ventures in the region. Its ambition is to establish the Cagayan Valley as the “Crypto Valley of Asia”. CEZA has setup a Self-Regulatory Organization, the Asian Blockchain And Cryptocurrency Association (“ABACA”) to oversee the governance of the digital assets in the Cagayan Special Economic Zone and Freeport region, providing a regulated environment to ensure that participants of CEZEX comply with the regulatory framework (KYC/AML/listing rules/trading rules).

The partnership between CEZEX and Digix builds upon the drive to further promote FinTech innovation in the Southeast Asia region whilst balancing the needs for more transparency, security and clarity in Fintech regulations. The partnership also strengthens the use-case of Digix’s gold-backed tokens (DGX) as accessible, and safe forms of securities for trading. DGX tokens are presently listed on internationally recognized digital exchanges including Bitfinex, KyberSwap, and Uniswap.

CEZEX will list DGX/DGD tokens on its platform on Monday, 29th July.

Digix is the world’s first smart-asset company using blockchain that accounts for the authentication and provenance of 99.99 percent investment-grade gold bullions. Physical gold bars are registered on the blockchain, and every 1 gram of physical gold registered is pegged to 1 DGX token.

Every DGX token represents 1 gram of gold that is stored in accredited precious metals vaults in Singapore and Canada. Retail investors holding DGX tokens can exchange their token back at Digix to redeem the physical investment-grade gold bullion.

Stimulating Economic Growth in the Cagayan Special Economic Zone

The strategic partnership between CEZEX and Digix comes at the lastest juncture in Southeast Asia’s drive for FinTech developments.

With cities across Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Singapore vying to become de-facto regional headquarters for FinTech capital investments, the Cagayan Special Economic Zone in the Cagayan Province of northern Luzon, represents the Philippines’s first economic zone to offer to host of financial technology companies. The development and growth of CEZEX will help bolster CEZA’s reputation as one of the leading fintech and cryptocurrency venture hubs for startups and will place the Philippines more firmly on the Asian and global map of fintech and blockchain innovation.

The initiative for CEZEX is led by a consortium that has been successful in building and operating FinTech, capital markets and trading platforms such as Coinhako (crypto wallet & digital currency exchange platform), Katalyse (previously known as Fundyourselfnow, Asia’s leading crypto crowdfunding platform), In base Partners (digital assets asset management and advisory firm), PPDE (leading derivatives operator in Cambodia) and Formosa Financial (platform for treasury management of digital assets in Taiwan).

“CEZEX is excited to announce of DGX by Digix — a token backed by grams of real gold that can be physically redeemed in Singapore. As pioneers in bringing traditional assets onto the blockchain bringing the Digix project to the CEZEX exchange is the next step towards creating a global marketplace for tokenized products.” Kenneth, CTO Cezex

“Digix’s plan to expand into more on-off ramps exchanges are one of our ways to increase adoption into the traditional Gold retail customer base. CEZEX, having that capability, gives my user the accessibility into owning that via fiat currencies.” Shaun, COO Digix.

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Written by Laura Zhang