A consortium backed by Wall Street giants BlackRock and Citadel Securities is launching a new national stock exchange in Texas, PANews reported. The Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE) aims to challenge the regulatory environment of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Nasdaq, capitalizing on growing dissatisfaction with the compliance costs of Nasdaq and NYSE and providing a more CEO-friendly environment.

A Citadel spokesperson confirmed that the company is an investor in TXSE, and TXSE Chairman and CEO James H. Lee also confirmed in his LinkedIn post that both BlackRock and Citadel Securities are involved in the project. TXSE has raised about $120 million from investors and plans to submit registration documents to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) later this year. It is expected to start operations in 2025 and plans to go public for the first time in 2026.

The crypto community has warmly welcomed this latest development, especially in light of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s optimism about the potential of Bitcoin ETFs and tokenization. Following the launch of the iShares Bitcoin ETF in January, Fink highlighted the potential for ETFs to revolutionize all financial instruments.