Israel’s Tel Aviv Stock Exchange to launch Blockchain-powered crypto exchange platform

Israel’s major equity and debt market, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE), now has ambitions to create a blockchain and digital asset-based trading platform. The exchange will create various kinds of tokenized digital assets with an emphasis on the development of distributed ledger and smart contract technology, according to a recent announcement.

Tel Aviv’s 2023 to 2027 strategy document, which was released on Monday, contains specifics on its plans for blockchain technology. One of the four announced strategic objectives was to “establish a platform for digital assets based on blockchain (DLT)” and “enter the crypto world.” the CEO Itai Ben-Zeev states:

“We see in the next five years a critical window of opportunity for the integration of the Israeli Stock Exchange in the technological revolution that the world’s capital markets are going through.”

Tel Aviv has ‘domestic advantage’

Tel Aviv will leverage its “domestic advantage” in Israel, continued Ben-Zeev, to promote the growth and adoption of fintech. While introducing new digital asset offerings, it may start to shift some of its current technological infrastructures in the direction of blockchain and “innovative technologies.”

Around the world, more authorities are considering using blockchain technology to upgrade the architecture of current markets. For instance, the European Union has already given the go-ahead for a blockchain-based securities trading pilot, just like Tel Aviv did on Monday.

Israel’s biggest bank Leumi teamed up with Paxos in March to launch trading services for Bitcoin and Ethereum. In June, a well-known Israeli venture capital firm unveiled a Web 3 fund, and in September, Bits of Gold, a local cryptocurrency exchange, received the first capital markets license in the cryptocurrency industry from the nation’s capital markets authority.

Currently, the TASE and the Ministry of Finance are discussing the possibility of issuing a digital state bond, as TheCoinRise reported. The test participants’ electronic wallets will receive units of the bond, which will then be paid out in digital currency.