About Xtrade

XTRD

About XTRD

As of January 2018, there are over 120 standalone cryptocurrency exchanges, facilitating trading in more than 1000 individual markets. Daily trading volume for cryptocurrencies is now equivalent to 20 billion USD, with a total market cap of over $700 billion. The majority of the trading is concentrated among the top 20 exchanges, denominated in multiple currencies ranging from crypto ones including Bitcoin and Ethereum to sovereign ones such as USD, GBP, JPY, CNY, and KRW, among others. Predictions point to growth toward a $1-2 trillion market capitalization in 2018, and a corresponding 3% average daily trading volume of $50 billion or more.

Asset managers are beginning to see increased demand for cryptocurrency exposure in their portfolios, over 500 active funds are being created to enter the market in 2018, and the regulatory climate is warming. However, the market is nascent, and large spreads are common between exchanges on the same crypto pairs, allowing for ample arbitrage opportunities that don’t exist in more efficient markets.

The inefficiency is a product of cryptocurrency trading markets being highly fractured in terms of execution, account setup, automated access, liquidity, execution speed, pricing, and security.

XTRD was created by finance and trading professionals to solve those problems by both improving on and consolidating current trading practices.

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Xtrade Roadmap

 

  • Q1 2018

  • Currently, most cryptocurrency exchanges &bull; offer an http-based REST API/Web socket for execution and market data. Even though these
    APIs are mostly similar, they are still heavily &#8208; fragmented, requiring many resources to unify
    into a single trading application. FIX is widely &#8208; adopted and much faster. &#8208;
    Therefore, the first step for XTRD to develop &bull; a unified FIX API for market data, order entry,
    and funds movement. When the FIX API is implemented, XTRD will not act as a custodian
    of funds or execute from an inventory account,
    but will instead facilitate trading for clients &bull; who have existing accounts at the most liquid exchanges by utilizing the FIX API to seamlessly &bull; place orders across the optimal mix of &bull; exchanges on which they have accounts.
    XTRD Dark Pool
    subscribers utilizing the FIX protocol Provide single trading interface over the FIX API to all connected exchanges. Right now, we support the following orders types:
    - market and limit, stop and stop limit, trailing stop
    - contingent, multi contingent
    - OCO (one cancels the other) and OTO
    (one triggers the other)
    Perform SMART routing &ndash; the execution engine will automatically choose the best execution path based on previous trading history and current market conditions (liquidity, price, slippage)
    Spread one large order across multiple exchanges
    &#8208;Perform pre-trade risk management
    &#8208;Drop copy all executions to clients over a FIX API
    We already have a FIX product (built originally for FX and Equity markets) with the capability to:
    &bull; Aggregate liquidity across different exchanges
    &bull; Manage orders books consistently, in real-time
    &bull; Build custom single order books based on
    an account&rsquo;s unique needs (e.g. I want to see
    quotes from Exchange A and B but not from C)
    &bull; Stream normalized market data to
    &bull; &#8208;Handle up to 20,000 orders per second
    XTRD anticipates completion of a production multi-market FIX API for crypto execution, market data, and fund movement by Q4 of 2017.

  • Q2 to Q3 2018

  • XTRD is an advanced, multi exchange manual crypto trading platform built by traders, for traders.
    XTRD principals have a combined 30 years of experience developing and administering front end systems for active traders in FX and equity, as well as creating and maintaining the back- end systems required to support front end trading. This involves a combination of extensive knowledge in market data handlers and data feed parsing, low latency execution engines, ticker plants, on-site colocation infrastructure with exchanges, advanced order types, execution reporting, database administration, and other operational requirements as well as implementation of industry best practices.
    CURRENT DIFFICULTIES WITH CRYPTO EXCHANGE GUIS AND SYSTEMS
    Most cryptocurrency exchanges have an antiquated, bare bones system that is accessed through a webpage with limited functionality. It&rsquo;s difficult to engage in high speed, multi- exchange execution given the necessity of clicking, scrolling, and typing in updated pricing as the order books continually change.
    For comparison, most manual high-speed trading systems utilize keyboard shortcuts and programmed functions, as well as initial pricing for order entry automatically pegged to bid/ask or +/- a certain liquidity threshold to cross the inside quote.
    The order book representation is also quite antiquated, with little to define individual market participants, incomplete representations of liquidity, and constant &ldquo;bursts&rdquo; of executions that come through in the aggregate because the exchange systems are too slow to pass through executions as they occur. This creates a &ldquo;dam&rdquo; effect where there is a burst of orders which lag by hundreds of milliseconds, and sometimes whole seconds &ndash; a length of time that would
    be considered unworkable in any other active trading space.
    Current crypto exchange systems are not robust enough to handle large traffic and varying order types. As an example, in late August 2017 a large crypto exchange had to disable all advanced order types for two months - including stop losses and trailing stops - to mitigate strain on their platform.

  • Q4 2018

  • SPA, or Single Point of Access, will allow XTRD to facilitate execution across multiple exchanges by opening just one account.
    SPA will be facilitated via a JV agreement with existing cryptocurrency exchanges. The first exchange to participate as a JV partner with XTRD is CEX.IO, with over $400 million USD daily volume, 1.2 million active traders and 7 million unique visitors per month.
    The JV agreement structure will allow XTRD to act as a technology provider/execution broker without having to assume the duties of fund custody and the requisite exchange regulatory and compliance overhead. The exchange will take custody of client funds and maintain KYC, while XTRD will act as the execution venue for the client&rsquo;s orders.
    If an order needs to be filled outside the JV exchange, XTRD will execute that transaction using our inventory account at another exchange and move the position over to the JV exchange where the customer&rsquo;s account is resident. The customer will be debited for the transaction at the JV exchange and settlement will occur there. XTRD will internalize client orders via the XTRD Dark Pool &ndash; if two orders match, we will not need to go out to other exchanges to fill them, but will instead match the market participants internally.
    XTRD will employ Continuous Net Settlement (CNS) to settle trades. CNS is similar to the National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC) settlement system in the sense that there is an automated book entry accounting system in place, except that XTRD will actually settle the trades much more quickly than T+2 or T+35 by continuously sweeping the positions between various exchanges.