RULEMATCH Spot On - Institutional Crypto Integration

Across the wide, global landscape of crypto markets, financial institutions often face challenges in connecting to venues, managing liquidity and coordinating order flows. To tackle this challenge they often to turn to order management systems providers like Talos. But as the industry gets more sophisticated and complex, the scope of services offered has to keep up as well. As it develops to keep up with demand, Talos and its Co-founder/CEO Anton Katz have collected unique insights on needs and preferences of financial institutions who are expanding their operations. In this episode of RULEMATCH Spot On, host Ian Simpson discussed the state of liquidity in crypto, the developing institutional crypto space as well as Talos’s expanding feature set with a view towards new business opportunities and the coming world of tokenization. Episode show notes: (1:16) Intro (2:16) A Talos perspective on crypto liquidity fragmentation (4:26) Anton’s view on the future of fragmentation (4:55) The incentive to split off liquidity (6:09) Where Talos stands at the entrance to a fragmented market (6:56) The most common question from Talos clients (7:46) How smaller (and bigger) players are trying to take advantage (9:19) Fragmentation of the stablecoin space (10:58) The urge to use stablecoins for settlement and other use cases (13:38) The main trend among stablecoins (14:03) “Old-fashioned” stablecoins for the risk-averse (14:38) Top considerations for choosing a venue (16:45) Order types as a key point (17:09) KYC or KYV for venues (18:18) The consideration of post-trade options for choosing a venue (19:16) Risk as a sizing function (19:54) Why people forget about counterparty risk (20:51) Comparing market models in crypto (23:04) Possibilities for M&A among trading venues (24:22) How Talos’s focus is changing over time (25:34) Connectivity moving towards “plug and play” (27:15) How latency is changing the game (28:31) Differences in alpha (29:15) Why TCA is becoming so important (29:51) Evaluating market needs over time (31:13) Why liquidity providers also need TCA (31:52) Progression in TCA tooling and wash trading detection (35:10) Fragmentation among settlement models (36:56) How prime brokers are helping out (37:28) “One-click settlement” (39:43) Demand for various settlement models (40:59) Tools to handle the flood after ETF approvals (41:20) Talos’s tools with traditional asset classes (43:13) Diving into PBs (44:49) Rivalry between PBs and exchanges (47:12) An opportunity for banks as prime brokers (49:10) Will regulation change the venue landscape? (52:40) The shadow of MiCAR (55:19) Working with clients on compliance regulation (55:45) Remembering the advantages of regulation (56:20) Peering into the future with tokenization (58:29) Fireblocks and Talos with broad network “distribution” (1:00:24) Looking into the crystal ball with stablecoins and lending/borrowing ABOUT THE HOST: Ian Simpson is Director of Marketing and Communication at RULEMATCH as well as host of the RULEMATCH Spot On podcast, focused exclusively on the institutional crypto and digital assets industry. Previously he was Head of Marketing at Bitcoin Suisse and Head of Communications at the Crypto Valley Association. Ian is a veteran of the Swiss crypto and digital assets industry since 2017. His insights on the Swiss crypto and blockchain ecosystem have been featured in CoinDesk, the leader in blockchain news. ------Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast about RULEMATCH AG (“RULEMATCH”) and any guest company is for general informational purposes only and should not be considered exhaustive. They do not imply any elements of a contractual relationship nor any offering. Neither Talos Global, Inc. nor any of its affiliates is an investment advisor or broker/dealer. This does not constitute an offer to buy or sell, or a promotion or recommendation of, any digital asset, security, derivative, commodity, financial instrument or product or trading strategy. This is not intended to constitute investment advice or a recommendation to make (or refrain from making) any kind of investment decision and may not be relied on as such.