High-speed telecommunications provider Perseus Telecom and digital currency trading platform Atlas ATS formally launched Wednesday a globally integrated bitcoin exchange system in New York, Hong Kong and Singapore to facilitate trading in the digital currency by high-frequency trading firms and other large financial institutions.

The two firms' collaboration, first reported last month by The Wall Street Journal, marks a milestone in the evolution of bitcoin out of a retail-oriented, loosely regulated low-tech environment to one that is open to the high-volume and strictly regulated activities of Wall Street. It comes after the sudden collapse of Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, which said it had lost 850,000 bitcoin-now worth more than $500 million-and a string of scandals, including a world-wide hacking attack that temporarily paralysed Mt. Gox competitors such as Slovenia-based Bitstamp.