XTRADE.io, a technology company founded by veteran Wall Street trading specialists, is introducing an infrastructure that would allow banks, hedge funds, and large institutional traders to easily access cryptocurrency markets. By building a low-latency infrastructure with a unified FIX API, a technology used on Wall Street for over 25 years, along with a standalone trading platform and liquidity aggregation the company will provide precise and virtually instant pricing data while minimizing ‘slippage’ for the trading of digital assets.
Currently, there are 124 active cryptocurrency exchanges with billions of dollars’ worth of coins traded each day. However, it is common for there to be large price differences for the same currency across different exchanges. In addition, amongst many of the current issues, low liquidity and slow order fulfillment cause ‘slippage’ which can cost transaction large orders upwards of 10% of the order value.
XTRADE is proposing a three-stage solution to solve these and some of the many issues that are a barrier to entry for large, institutional or professional traders.
In phases, the company plans to implement:
- Universal FIX API
- Standalone Trading Platform – XTRADE PRO
- Singular Point of Access (SPA) for Liquidity Aggregation
1. A Universal FIX API
FIX is the standard means of communication for trading in global equity markets and is also heavily used in currencies, bonds, and derivatives. Every large institutional and professional market participant uses FIX to trade and has been doing so for over 25 years.
XTRADE will launch a universal low latency FIX based API connecting to all major crypto exchanges to make it easy for major institutions, hedge funds, and algorithmic traders to access all cryptocurrency markets by coding to just one FIX application – in one format – with which they are already intimately familiar.
XTRADE will leverage their existing infrastructure at major data centers worldwide with direct cross-connections to crypto exchange matching engines and private transatlantic internet lines to decrease execution and market data delivery latency for institutional customers by a factor of at least 100x with VPS services.
2. Professional Traders Use Stand-Alone Trading Platforms
Most finance professionals and active traders don’t use web-based trading platforms to consume market data and trade. Instead, they use robust, secure, standalone, downloadable applications that allow for fast order entry, immediate execution, advanced charting, and custom order types. Those applications provide customer support including feature development tailored to their customers’ demands. The most successful of these applications become platforms that are used to manage trading across multiple systems and asset classes.
XTRADE will launch XTRADE Pro in 2018. The platform will include, among other features, advanced consolidated order books, hotkey order entry, and custom order types, with 24×7 uptime.
3. Aggregated Liquidity for Disparate Exchanges
XTRADE creates a single unified point of access to aggregate liquidity across exchanges for traders. This aggregation allows traders to clear their orders at the best possible prices while delivering the lowest possible transaction costs as all with just one client-side account.
XTRADE SPA will be facilitated via Joint Venture (JV) partnerships with existing exchanges to minimize the regulatory hurdles as XTRADE will function purely as a technology provider. Exchanges will fulfill the custodial function, while XTRADE will clear balances from its inventory accounts at other exchanges to close the trades made by clients within the JV exchange.
- Currently, NONE of these technologies have been cohesively applied in the world of cryptocurrency trading.
- Stable and mature crypto markets are possible using existing technologies.
- Ultimately, XTRADE’s goal is to apply mature technologies that already exist in a field that desperately is looking for stability.
“XTRADE looks to upgrade the basic plumbing behind cryptocurrency markets,” said Alexander Kravets, co-founder of XTRADE. “There are billions of dollars flowing in and out of these markets every day with incredible inefficiency. Literally, hundreds of millions of dollars are being wasted on inefficiencies that could be solved by applying existing, mature technology that has been tried and tested on Wall Street. That’s our mission with XTRADE.”
The team behind XTRADE has over 30 years of extensive real-world experience building robust, battle-tested trading systems in FX, Equities, Derivatives, and other instruments. They have specialist knowledge in all facets of brokerage services, execution, market data, trading platforms, clearing, settlement, algorithmic trading, and automated trading systems. XTRADE principals and advisors own crypto exchanges – and have worked in active trading firms all over the world as well as large financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Lehman, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan in technology, operational, and sales roles.
The company already has a working minimum viable product of their FIX API and has existing partnerships with companies and exchanges.
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