The first broker-dealer start-up has been announced recently.
Digital Currency Group announced the launch of the first broker-dealer on Thursday. The new venture is called Genesis Trading and it’s actually a renovated division of Second Market Inc that will specialize in digital currencies trading. Although it places its stake on bitcoin first of all, the scope of activity isn’t limited – it will also work with other virtual currencies such as litecoin.
It seems that SecondMarket has already contributed greatly to bitcoin promotion, but separation of Genesis is a step forward. According to Genesis CEO Brendan O’Connor launch of separate firm dealing with institutional customers is extremely important for today’s market.
The firm is aimed first and foremost at hedge funds and other asset investors striving to create a larger space for business. O’Connor underlines the brand-new nature of the idea saying that having two sides unfamiliar to each other but still transacting simply and correctly at low cost is great.
The company is independent from Second Market and has an experienced team of 10 employees. They have been offering institutional trading services to the markets that used to be difficult to access and according to their own words “they combine both traditional Wall Street experience with best-in-class technology and sales coverage”.
Genesis Trading is the first fully-authorized broker-dealer for bitcoin traders. The numbers tell the stories best – only for the last several years it fulfilled approximately 800,000 transactions with total cost of $300 million, which at once made it the largest over-the-counter trading tool on bitcoin market.
Brendan O’Connor stated that Genesis turnover per week makes up $3-5 million while for the last two years the company has profited $25 billion trading fixed-interest securities. As of Thursday the rate of bitcoin made up approx 3.6 percent at $226.
It must be noted that digital currencies haven’t been trusted much recently. The price decreased about $60 over the last month. There has been a research showing that number of American consumers trading bitcoin is not so large.
Nevertheless the sphere of digital trading is developing having prospective customers who don’t rely on traditional methods of money transmitting as a target and the launch of Genesis Trading seems to be a new step in its evolution.
According to the words of former U.S. treasury secretary Larry Summers: “People who confidently reject all the innovation are on the wrong side of history”. The launch of new broker-dealer on digital currencies market will only speed up the process of so-called “institutionalisation” of virtual currency.
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