Oxygen sets up DLT business in Gibraltar

The Minister for Commerce, Albert Isola, recently met with Alex Grebnev and Alex Melikhov, the co-founders and respectively CEO and COO of Oxygen, a new business setting up in Gibraltar under the distributed ledger technology regulatory framework.

Mr Grebnev and Mr Melikhov were visiting Gibraltar on business in relation to DLT venture Oxygen that is establishing on the Rock.

The meeting provided an opportunity to discuss plans for the development of the Oxygen project and the support provided by the Government in this nascent industry.

The visit to Gibraltar included a scheduled meeting with the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission as Oxygen is in the advanced stages of applying for a license in Gibraltar under the DLT Regulatory Framework.

Mr Grebnev, who previously worked at Goldman Sachs for almost a decade in various roles in equities and derivatives structuring before joining Merrill Lynch, is working with an existing cryptocurrency exchange called Changelly.

He plans to launch a platform for digital currencies later in 2018 that will allow private or institutional investors to strike so-called repurchase agreements (repos) with one another.

The platform, called Oxygen, will provide an opportunity for investors to generate revenue by lending out their crypto assets, raise liquidity against them or borrow crypto assets to go short.

It will initially target Changelly’s existing two million clients on the B2C side and leading OTC desks, crypto exchanges and market-makers on the B2B side.

Accompanying Mr Grebnev and Mr Melikhov was Olena Clayton together with Patricia Risso and Karan Aswani both of Gibraltar law firm Isola’s LLP.

Paul Astengo Senior Executive with Gibraltar Finance and who leads on technology initiatives was also present.