Crossover Markets Group, Inc., a digital asset trading technology firm focused on meeting the unique liquidity requirements of institutions in the spot and derivative cryptocurrency markets, today announced the launch of CROSSx, its execution-only cryptocurrency Electronic Communication Network (ECN).
The firm’s seed investment round was funded by a consortium of leading market participants in both traditional finance and digital assets. The investors include Exness Ltd., Flow Traders, Gate.io, GMO Internet Group, Nomura’s Laser Digital, Pepperstone, Think Markets, TMGM, Two Sigma and Wintermute Ventures.CROSSx brings to market one of the fastest crypto trading engines in the world, dramatically decreasing trading costs, improving execution quality and enhancing market data capabilities. Crossover avoids conflicts of interest by decoupling trade execution from custody and brokerage, giving institutions the ability to freely choose their own credit counterparties. As an execution-only trading venue provider, Crossover does not hold client funds, directly handle assets or carry counterparty risk.Crossover was founded by industry veterans from traditional finance, bringing their experience to bear on digital assets. Crossover’s Chief Executive Officer Brandon Mulvihill and Chief Commercial Officer Anthony Mazzarese most recently spearheaded the FX Prime Brokerage business at Jefferies. Arriving from Euronext FX, Crossover Chief Technology Officer Vlad Rysin brings significant experience in building and operating execution venues in equities and FX; earlier he served as CTO of Credit Suisse FICC, and CTO of FastMatch (eventually sold to Euronext).Mr. Mulvihill said, “We are delighted with the financial backing of global industry leaders in retail brokerage, market making, quantitative trading, banking, and crypto-native firms. Our consortium partners share our vision and have paved the way to create scale and opportunities for other industry participants to join our platform and participate in future rounds.”Crossover’s unique model leverages best practices and order logic from the equities and FX markets, delivering unprecedented efficiencies. With sub-20 microsecond matching engine latency and throughput of millions of messages per second, CROSSx is many times faster than typical crypto exchanges, providing clients access to the fastest pricing and trade executions. CROSSx also provides an unprecedented level of liquidity customization, enabling clients to create custom dark and lit liquidity pools so they can trade with whom they want based on desired trade size, spread, toxicity and skew protection. Adding to the venue’s flexibility to meet client needs, it supports anonymous, disclosed and semi-disclosed trading over one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many connections. Furthermore, fees to trade on CROSSx are among the lowest in the industry, at 0.01% for both makers and takers. Jeff Wecker, CTO at Two Sigma, said, “As the digital assets space evolves, diverse and reliable execution venues for institutional trading are critical. We are excited to support a team with a track record of success in traditional finance in their effort to bring necessary technological innovation to the digital assets markets.”Michael Lie, Head of Digital Asset Trading at Flow Traders, added, “We’re delighted to be working with Crossover on this latest venture and strongly believe CROSSx can address the demand for an institutional-grade infrastructure, something Flow Traders strongly supports.” Olivier Dang, Head of Ventures at Laser Digital, said, “The Crossover platform will drive greater efficiency for market participants by providing ultra-low latency execution. The team brings unique Tradfi expertise to the digital asset ecosystem and we are looking forward to working closely with them on scaling up CROSSx.”Damian Bunce, Chief Customer Officer at Exness, said, “The CROSSx ECN applies a tried-and-tested Tradfi liquidity model to the digital assets industry. As a major liquidity provider of crypto assets, we wanted to be an early investor in the project and team.”Ken Nakamura, CEO at GMO Trust, said, “CROSSx provides a highly efficient and dependable execution platform for sophisticated institutional market participants, spanning both traditional finance and digital asset ecosystems. Leveraging GMO Internet Group’s robust foundation in both areas, we eagerly anticipate collaborating closely with the Crossover team.”
By on Tue, 21 Mar 2023 16:33:00 GMT
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