Revisiting the moves around digital assets
We take a step back from the banking news to look into the top trends and investments around the digital asset and crypto space that we may have missed..
We’re going to take a step back from the day-to-day news today. The above-the-fold news for the past week has all been about bailouts and bank runs. But a lot of other things have been happening. Specifically, there has been a flurry of investments and partnerships around the crypto space. Let’s dive in.
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“Never cross a river that is on average 4 feet deep”
~ Nassim Taleb
Top of Queue
New Ways to own Bitcoin
Making investing in crypto or digital assets look and feel the same as stocks is very important for the industry to continue to onboard the next generation of users. We saw two major developments in this space over the past week:
Five years ago Fidelity adding access to bitcoin to its retail customers would have sent bitcoin prices skyrocketing. Heck, even the rumor of that would have set people off in a frenzy. Well, last week they turned the hose on. In the flip of a switch, Fidelity gave 37mm account access to Bitcoin in a completely frictionless manner.
Bitwise just launched BITC, a new Bitcoin-linked ETF that CEO Hunter Horsley describes as "an opportunity for financial advisors to help their clients gain exposure to bitcoin through a cost-effective and convenient vehicle." It’s not quite a true bitcoin ETF, but it’s just another way for people to have the same experience buying bitcoin exposure as they do buying an S&P 500 ETF.
The trading tech arena is heating up
One of the notable trends coming out of last year was that despite the market volatility in crypto, hedge funds and trading firms stayed committed to their goal to onboard crypto into their funds. Competition for a piece action of that is heating up amongst tech providers..
Turnkey, which revealed a $7.5 million seed fundraise on Tuesday, provides the latest example, with a team of former Coinbase Custody execs offering a platform to provide a foundation for a crypto industry in which trillions of on-chain transactions occur, rather than a world where investors simply lock up their assets. Turnkey is aiming itself as a developer-first tool that allows users to "generate hundreds of wallets and sign thousands of transactions across any chain, all with flexible, programmable permissions to ensure you only sign what you want."
CoinRoutes, a startup that aims to help crypto hedge funds and other investors get the best price on trades, has been awarded a patent for its system of routing transactions to exchanges and estimating costs. The invention allows clients to execute orders across multiple exchanges simultaneously while keeping control of their own private and exchange keys to their wallets and accounts.
Talos, a provider of digital asset trading technology, has announced an integration with Keyrock, a digital asset market maker, to provide Talos customers with a deeper pool of global liquidity. The partnership will allow Talos to expand in the EU and provide clients with more efficient markets and improved liquidity.
Nomura's digital assets subsidiary, Laser Digital, has made a strategic investment in ClearToken, a start-up that aims to provide a central counterparty clearing house for digital assets. ClearToken's platform will allow all participants to face the clearing house instead of each other, reducing risk and streamlining transactions.
The fight for the home of crypto trading
There’s a bit of a hole in the crypto market right now. Previously FTX was seen as the home of derivatives and Binance the home for spot. But now that FTX has shut down and Binance is facing regulatory concerns, the go-to place on where to buy and sell crypto is actually a bit less clear than what one might imagine. People are trying to fix this.
Crossover Markets is launching a new crypto trading venue called CrossX, which has received $6.35 million in seed funding from trading firms such as Two Sigma, Flow Traders, Laser Digital, and Wintermute Ventures. The platform offers ultra-fast trading with a sub-20 microsecond matching engine latency and can handle millions of messages per second. CrossX decouples trade execution from custody and brokerage and offers custom dark and lit liquidity pools, as well as anonymous, disclosed, and semi-disclosed trading. Trading fees on the platform are 0.01% for both makers and takers.
FTX has attracted bidders including Miami International Securities Exchange (MIAX) and Kalshi for its crypto-derivatives platform, LedgerX, one of the few solvent pieces of Sam Bankman-Fried’s former empire. The acquisition would be a big step forward for any acquiring company as it would give them a CFTC-registered exchange ready to go.
The owner of the Toronto Stock Exchange plans to offer spot cryptocurrency trading on one of its main securities exchanges from next year. Canada’s TMX Group aims to list cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether directly on the TSX Alpha Exchange, an equities bourse that aims to protect smaller trades from high-frequency trading strategies.
Eurex is launching a Bitcoin Futures Contract. Trading is scheduled to start in one month on April 17th. The y developed the new contract in partnership with FTSE Russell and Digital Asset Research (DAR), its provider of institutional-grade digital asset data.
Across the Tape
Trading & Exchanges
London Losing to Paris in Battle of Equity Markets - link
Eurex to Launch Bitcoin Index Futures - link
NYSE introduces closing auction imbalance analysis tool - link
RQD Partners With Blue Ocean Technologies for Clearing Services - link
GoldenSource Launches New Real-Time Investment Book of Record - link
State Street Further Expands Outsourced Trading Capabilities - link
AllianceBernstein Launches Three New Active Equity ETFs on NYSE Arca - link
StoneX and ACX to Collaborate to Create U.S. Digital Carbon Marketplace - link
Zero-Day Options Boom Is Turning Wall Street Trading On Its Head - link
T. ROWE PRICE PUBLISHES 2022 YEAR-END REPORT FEATURING 401(k) PLAN SPONSOR AND PARTICIPANT BEHAVIOR AMID INFLATION AND MARKET VOLATILITY - link
Hedge Funds
Regulation
SEC Charges Crypto Entrepreneur Justin Sun and his Companies for Fraud and Other Securities Law Violations - link
SEC Market Structure Proposal Q1 2023: Institutional Panel - link
Crypto & Digital Assets
Coinbase's Wallet-as-a-Service (WaaS) APIs are now available for Public Preview! - link
Copper to Lay Off Up to 15% of Staff, Focus on Crypto Custody, Settlement - link
Deutsche Börse's Crypto Subsidiary Provides Trading Solutions to Apex Group - link
Archax’s crypto believer boss Graham Rodford: ‘We enable Abrdn to be more dynamic’ on digital assets - link
TMX eyes spot crypto trading launch next year - link
Nomura’s Laser Digital invests in ClearToken to enhance institutional engagement with digital assets - link
ESG
US Investors Fear Legal Action as ESG Splits Global Markets - link
Odd Lots
MIT Scientists Twist Apart More Than 1,000 Oreos in Search for Perfect Method - link