Germany's No. 2 Stock Exchange Unveils Crypto Trading App

The fintech arm of Germany's second-largest stock exchange is set to launch a cryptocurrency trading app later this year.

Sowa Labs, a subsidiary of Börse Stuttgart, unveiled the app on Friday, which it said would be available for use in September and will initially offer trading support for bitcoin, ether, XRP and litecoin. According to the app's official website, "more assets [are] coming soon."

The app, called Bison, will be free to download and, according to its developers, won't charge trading fees at launch. A prototype of the app is being demoed during a trade show in Stuttgart this week.

"Bison makes trading in digital currencies easy. It is the first crypto app in the world to have a traditional stock exchange behind it," Ulli Spankowski, Sowa Labs' managing director, said in a statement.

The exchange acquired Sowa Labs in December of last year, taking a 100 percent stake in the Ulm-based startup. While the exact figure isn't known, the acquisition price was reportedly in the millions of euros.

The development represents the latest instance of a traditional stock exchange getting into the cryptocurrency trading game through a subsidiary.

Last month, Canadian stock exchange operator TMX announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary had a struck a deal in order to set up a cryptocurrency brokerage. That brokerage, which will initially focus on bitcoin and ether, is set to launch in the second quarter of 2018, as reported at the time.