The company’s chief executive, Adam Tepper, said Independent Reserve has “last mover advantage” and has spent “thousands of hours on R&D and learning from other venues to make sure our platform is completely robust”.
“Our proprietary technology includes many levels of safeguards to ensure users are well protected,” Mr Tepper said.
Independent Reserve advisory board chairman Michael Go welcomed the regulation of bitcoin in Australia.
“The fact that regulators and industry watchdogs are taking Bitcoin seriously is an excellent thing,” Mr Go said.
The Australian Taxation Office announced in August that it would treat bitcoins as an asset.
“With increased regulation and vigilance comes improvements in the quality and safety of the industry as a whole,” Mr Go said.
“Bitcoin is an important form of payment for millions of people now, with very significant companies like Dell accepting them as payment, prices shown on Bloomberg terminals and Bitcoin ATMs opening every week,” he added.
Mr Tepper said Sydney was chosen as a base for the global exchange due to Australia’s stable political landscape and strong regulatory regime.
“We have spoken consistently with ASIC and the ATO as Independent Reserve has developed, as well as had the company audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers,” Mr Tepper said.
Independent Reserve servers are securely located at two Tier Three data centres in Sydney, and the market’s data is “signed and encrypted multiple times using geographically dispersed keys, spread across four data centres and the market utilises cold storage to hold the majority of Bitcoins completely offline”, said a statement by the company.
