It is the opinion of many experts, analysts and traders in the cryptocurrency space that institutional players are likely to make the biggest difference in ensuring mainstream status for digital assets. However, Alexander Kravets, the U.S. CEO of cryptocurrency exchange CEX.IO, is taking an opposite stance, and putting all his betting money on retail players.
Kravets: Retail Players Will Hold Greater Influence
CEX is a digital assets trading platform that recently expanded its presence across the U.S. by garnering money transmitter licenses (MLTs) in more than nine states, some of which include West Virginia, New Hampshire, Alaska and Kansas. The company has also partnered with another exchange – XTRD.io – and garnered several institutional customers in the process, which frees up the company somewhat to focus on what Kravets thinks is the real glue of the cryptocurrency world: retail-based traders.
In a recent interview, Kravets comments:
We believe that the next big wave of trading in cryptocurrency markets will be driven by retail participation in concert with institutional involvement. Correspondingly, our priorities for the institutional arm of CEX.io is to enable hardware connectivity, matching engine upgrades that are in line with institutional demand, and liquidity aggregation to deepen the exchange book. We will leverage CEX.IO’s status as a regulated, experienced player in the digital asset trading space to acquire targeted institutional lines of business that can interact with existing retail liquidity on the CEX.IO exchange.
In many ways, experts could say that Kravets’ argument goes against all logic. Several players within the cryptocurrency space – including Jennifer Campbell, the CEO and co-founder of the Tagomi exchange – believe that institutional investors are likely to play the biggest part when ensuring the solidity and strength of the crypto business.
Nevertheless, Kravets believes that retail players will always hold a higher position given that they are more willing to take risks. In addition, they have been involved in the crypto arena longer than institutional players, and thus boast more knowledge and confidence when it comes to trading virtual money.
Some Exciting News Down the Line
Aside from allowing trades with several different coins and assets, Kravets says that CEX.IO is presently working on several new crypto-based products that customers will enjoy, though he didn’t speculate further on what those could be. He explained:
We envision this ecosystem of products to evolve naturally, with mutual development and integration efforts allowing for a follow-up suite of products leveraging the XTRD token. These can range from institutional market data solutions such as aggregated data feeds and market indices to liquidity pools, integrated trading platforms for manual order entry, and products catering to high frequency traders such as colocation services and fast execution capability. The ecosystem is the implementation of joint products deriving from a collaborative synergistic effort of CEX.IO and XTRD.