We do the research, you get the alpha!
Cryptocurrency exchange EDX Markets has announced that it will work with the Talos trading platform to create more access points to the market as more large institutions are stepping into the ring.
Under the deal, Talos will develop a front-end system for EDX that better connects the latter’s clients to liquidity, crypto custodians, and other trading tools already offered by Talos' wide network of providers across the digital asset space.
For EDX, a new exchange backed by large Wall Street firms, the Talos integration is its latest move to strengthen its position as a competitive player in the digital asset market only a month after trading began on its exchange.
"We feel very strongly that we're going to have the best prices in the market," Jamil Nazarali, EDX's CEO, told Decrypt in an interview. "And so to the extent that more people connect to us, we're confident it's going to drive volumes."
For the most part, crypto markets are less concentrated than those in traditional financial markets. In the TradFi realm, traders seek out pricing data from a handful of centralized exchanges, such as Nasdaq, that then receive the bulk of trading volume. In the case of crypto, this data is more disparate with prices varying across myriad exchanges.
Talos—which counts large crypto exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken and Binance as part of its network—bridges this data and will thus make it more readily available on a single platform on which EDX clients can conduct trades.
For newcomers entering the digital asset space from TradFi, this creates a more familiar set of tools that makes their forays into digital asset trading smoother, a source familiar with the deal told Decrypt.
Meanwhile, interest from big institutional investors in crypto has steadily risen despite a partial retreat last year that followed the collapse of cryptoexchange FTX.
In June, BlackRock announced that it filed an application to launch an exchange-traded fund in Bitcoin spot markets, setting off a rally in the leading token’s value that sent it past $30,000 for weeks before cooling recently. Beyond BlackRock, other big TradFi firms like Fidelity, VanEck and Valkyrie filed their own applications for Bitcoin spot ETFs, further extending the rally.
Executives and other industry insiders previously told Decrypt that they believe the continuing convergence between crypto and TradFi is a necessary step in achieving wider mainstream adoption of digital tokens. Many are getting involved despite lingering concerns around the current regulatory regime in the United States.
EDM Markets recently closed a new funding round that added several strategic investors to a coalition of founding investors that included Charles Schwab, Citadel Securities, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Sequoia Capital.
Talos was co-founded by current CEO Anton Katz, who came from quantitative investment firm AQR Capital Management, and CTO Ethan Feldman, who worked with Katz at fintech firm Broadway Technology.