by Ricky Li
On August 23, Altonomy co-hosted the launch party for the China Blockchain Application Center’s (CBAC) New York branch alongside Distributed Credit Chain, DATA, UseChain and CertiK. For those unfamiliar, the CBAC is an organization that promotes certification and standards of the blockchain industry, encourages industry-wide practices, prevents financial risks and establishes collaboration between the blockchain industry in China and worldwide.
At the event, I was fortunate enough to moderate a panel with some of the leading minds in cryptocurrency — Michael Moro (Genesis Global Trading), David Namdar (Galaxy Digital), Nick Goodrich (TrueDigital) and Wilfred Daye (OKCoin). We had a robust discussion of the emerging trading environments in both Asia and the U.S., focusing on three major topics:
• What are the differences in terms of the trading landscape between Asia and the U.S.?
• What are the current hurdles in crypto trading?
• What does the future of crypto trading look like?
On the subject of the differences between U.S. and Asia, a recurring sentiment was the impact of the regulatory variances between the markets. This has and will continue to influence the overall sector and where people choose to issue their coins and make their trades.
David Namdar noted the biggest thing impacting the markets and the disparity between the East and the West really comes down to regulation. When it came to the perspective of the U.S. crypto trading market, Michael Moro noted that as the number of exchanges grows, it’s reasonable for issuers, traders and crypto holders to be concerned about issues one would expect on any exchange. But because of the nature of crypto currency and its underlying technology, it’s also important to consider security. This is of particular interest to hedge funds and family offices, many of which have been sitting on the sidelines. It was also brought up that the arbitrage opportunities have all but gone away as quantitative trading firms have increasingly gotten involved. At the same time, these firms have begun to apply high-frequency trading and other institutional-quality strategies.
Unlike traditional trading platforms that have been around for years and conduct millions of trades daily, the crypto exchanges are very new and are still taking shape. This contributes to growing pains on things as routine as onboarding and trade settlement. With the number of exchanges in the hundreds, this can have an adverse effect on liquidity, but none of the panelists expect those issues will go away any time soon. Some even wondered whether exchanges would ultimately take the form of a foreign or commodities exchange.
We concluded our discussion by looking into the crystal ball and thinking about the future of crypto trading. While regulation (with the U.S. likely taking a leading role) remained top of mind for everyone, some noted that regulation could mean exchanges will relocate to safer havens, taking jobs and wealth creation with them. Others commented that it could accelerate the involvement of more Main Street institutions and their clientele. But one thing they all seemed to agree on is that order in the crypto trading market is still very much in the future.
