LedgerX Will Transform Cryptocurrencies

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission granted LedgerX -- a cryptocurrency trading platform -- registration as a clearing house for derivatives contracts settling in digital currencies. This indicates increasing official acceptance of cryptocurrencies. More important, the move could redefine them.

Derivatives clearing houses catalyze enormous economic change. The creation of agricultural futures clearing houses in the mid-19 century American West transformed a sparsely populated backwater into ground zero for the second Industrial Revolution. In the same place exactly 125 years later, on April 26, 1973, financial options clearing houses gave birth to the modern global derivatives economy.