Former regulators appointed to Ominex crypto exchange advisory board

Cryptocurrency exchange Ominex has joined the rush of digital platforms looking to boost mainstream legitimacy by appointing two former regulators to its advisory board.

The exchange, which is focused on institutional investors, said on its blog on Tuesday that it had appointed Arthur Levitt and Sheila Bair to its board of chief advisors.

Arthur Levitt

Levitt was the 25th and longest-serving chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) between 1993-2001 and currently serves as board member at Bloomberg and Motif Investing, along with additional advisory board roles at KCG, Promontory Financial Group and BitPay.

He said following his appointment that institutional investors needed purpose-built technology to handle the hidden obstacles they were likely to encounter in the cryptocurrency sector.

He added: “Omniex is ahead of the curve and will be the conduit that unifies the current fragmented crypto-ecosystem into a streamlined infrastructure.”

Sheila Bair

Bair, meanwhile, was chair at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation between 2006-11 and was the founding chair of the Systemic Risk Council. She said that the revolutionary new asset class needed fresh regulatory thinking.

She added: “Technology like Omniex is designed to address regulators’ concerns about a lack of robust market infrastructure, and will enable institutional investors to manage risk across a wide range of jurisdictions, liquidity sources and crypto-assets.”

Additional appointments

In addition to the appointments of Levitt and Bair, Ominex also hired Maartje Bus, the former head of capital markets at Thomson Reuters, as its director of Strategic Partnerships, and Tom Edit, former head of regulatory affairs at KCG, as chief compliance officer.

Ominex said of its new hires: “Each appointment brings a wealth of capital markets expertise and leadership to our team that will be critical to achieving our mission of empowering institutional investors to seize the opportunities of crypto-assets.

“As we transition from development to global deployment, the strength of our team will ensure we maintain our first-mover advantage.”

Ominex has raised $10m in first round funding in the last 10 months from venture capital firms Wicklow Capital, Jump Capital, Digital Currency Group, Sierra Ventures, Clocktower Technology Ventures, Thirdstream Partners and Brevan Howard.