The Fast and the Curious: the Latency Barrier for Institutional Crypto Traders

Our Product Manager, Gaspard Coudurier, spoke to Emilia David of WatersTechnology about the importance of latency for the crypto market.

WatersTechnology 8/10/2018: Banks and hedge funds have traditionally looked at cryptocurrencies with a large amount of scepticism, but in the past few years, interest in the space has ratcheted up. With increased interest comes a lot of pressure on crypto exchanges to prove they meet institutional investors’ exacting requirements.

Digital currency exchanges (DCEs) are where cryptocurrency trading happens, where the market data lies, and in some cases where the money lives, as is the case with traditional exchanges. And this wild new world is attracting prospectors. Institutional investors—hedge funds, traders from banks, and high-frequency firms—are interested in the possibilities crypto assets hold. But they are not without risks.

Network providers like BSO and BT have already received interest from a number of DCEs, executives at both firms say. Both offer cloud and hosted services and co-locate in data centres so clients enjoy low-latency connectivity to exchanges such as Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange.

Gaspard Coudurier, product manager at BSO, says crypto exchanges and crypto traders have reached out to talk about enhancing connectivity for institutional investors. Coudurier says;

“Institutional investors, when it comes to choosing an exchange, use connectivity and latency as a parameter. We’ve seen a lot of institutional investors thinking of moving into cryptos so we’ve seen a lot of consideration for latency.”

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