The venue at a glance

Banks and securities firms can become participants on the RULEMATCH trading venue.

Participants may offer sponsored access to qualifying financial institutions. Responsibility for any activities of sponsored clients remains with the participant itself.

RULEMATCH admits participants from selected countries which adhere to the standards of both the OECD and the FATF. Participants therefore trade with counterparties that operate in an equivalent regulatory environment.

RULEMATCH acts exclusively as a market operator that brings together the buying and selling interest of its participants followed by clearing and settlement amongst them. It is never a market maker, broker or counterparty in trading or settlement.

Trading, clearing and settlement are non-discretionary and rule-based. All participants must adhere to the rules set out in the RULEMATCH rulebook.

Orders are time-stamped in microseconds and matched according to price-time priority. RULEMATCH uses the proven matching engine technology of Nasdaq.

RULEMATCH uses the Nasdaq market surveillance system to detect market manipulation or market abuse.

In a first phase, RULEMATCH offers spot trading of the following pairs: BTC/USD, ETH/USD.

Trading on RULEMATCH takes place on a Central Limit Order Book (CLOB). Orders are matched based on price-time priority.

Competitive and consistent liquidity is provided through designated market makers.

The RULEMATCH trading day runs from 22:00 to 21:30 (+1) UTC with a 30’ break in between. Trading is open from Monday to Sunday.

Each trading day consists of the following sessions: Opening Auction, Continuous Trading and Closing Auction. Auctions allow for concentrated liquidity and have a randomized closing.

Traders may use Limit, Market, Best Limit and Market-to-Limit orders,combined with time-in-force conditions such as Day, IoC, FoK, GtC and GtD to trade on the venue.

Multilateral net settlement among participants reduces transaction costs and enhances capital efficiency, especially for very active traders.

Settlement transactions are conducted strictly on a delivery versus payment (DvP) basis. Assets are transferred directly from account to account or wallet to wallet of the participants and are never pooled with RULEMATCH.

Cross-asset collateral requirements are calibrated to address the market risk arising from the default of another participant with a confidence level of 99%.

The identification of participants and the verification of participant information is conducted using reliable, independent sources and is a foundational element of AML/CFT compliance at RULEMATCH. It is carried out before establishing a relationship with a new participant and throughout the lifetime of each participant relationship.

Participant data is regularly checked against a comprehensive, international database to detect potential sanctions risk, politically exposed persons and related adverse media.

All transfers of digital assets in connection with settlement and collateral handling are screened in real-time to protect other participants from financial crime. RULEMATCH uses the blockchain analytics solution from Ellipitic for this purpose.

Participants can set up one or more House accounts to manage their proprietary or client trading activities.

Participants can set up a segregated account for each of their institutional clients in order to ensure segregation of assets, positions, margin and collateral.

Participants can assign specific permissions to their users on account level and based on their internal functions such as treasury, trading, middle office, risk, or reporting. Specific permissions are available in connection with sponsored and direct market access.

Fiat for collateral and settlement purposes are held in segregated fiduciary accounts at a AA-rated, state-guaranteed Swiss bank.

Cryptocurrencies are held in segregated blockchain wallets using the Metaco Harmonize system and secured with IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Crypto Services, the industry’s only encryption service based on a hardware security module certified to FIPS 140-2 Level 4.

Trades are executed with a median latency of under 30 microseconds (door-to-door, OUCH). This makes RULEMATCH probably the fastest trading venue for cryptocurrencies with a Central Limit Order Book (CLOB) in the world.

With rate limits higher than 1’000 orders per second, high frequency traders can fully utilize the potential of low-latency strategies for cryptocurrencies and digital assets.

Participants can colocate their trading system with RULEMATCH.

RULEMATCH supports the financial industry standard FIX connection (4.4/5.0SP2) as well as Nasdaq’s binary ITCH/OUCH protocol for the fastest execution speeds.

A browser-based trading interface is available, which can be used without integration as well as a fallback option.

Participants can connect via Internet (VPN/TLS), AWS PrivateLink, as well as cross-connect at Equinix ZH4 and in Green Data Centers (Zurich City, Zurich West).

The RULEMATCH Market Operations team is based exclusively in Zurich and serves participants around the clock.

Through the RULEMATCH system interface, users can perform a variety of administrative tasks, including liquidity and collateral management, deposits, and withdrawals, as well as report generation.

All trade- and account management reports are easily available and downloadable within the RULEMATCH system interface.