29.03.2024

Bithumb to Get Wall Street-Level Fintech Expertise via New Partnership

Major South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb has partnered with Singaporean crypto trading platform BitMax to jointly develop new services and products.

As not a day goes by without another cryptocurrency partnership, one of the biggest crypto exchanges in South Korea has begun new cooperation.

According to a Feb. 17 blog post by Bithumb Official, the two companies have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to bring their forces together to build new services and strengthen their competitiveness in the global market. As part of the MoU, Bithumb and BitMax will be sharing their expertise with one another to actively cooperate in the development of blockchain and crypto-related technologies and infrastructure.

BitMax’s staff includes former experts from Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Gemini

In the announcement, Bithumb emphasized that BitMax’s founding team includes quant trading experts from Wall Street as well as major crypto trading veterans. Founded by George Cao, former chief investment officer of Delpha Capital Management in 2018, BitMax comprises experts from top global financial firms such as Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Bloomberg and Winklevoss-run crypto exchange Gemini.

BitMax is a major crypto liquidity player

With the new partnership with BitMax, Bithumb hopes to access fintech know-how from Wall Street, the South Korean exchange said. Additionally, the MoU is designed to equip Bithumb with more capabilities in building infrastructure and expanding bases in related industries, the company noted.

Additionally, BitMax is purportedly one of the top 10 global players in terms of cryptocurrency liquidity, Bithumb noted. Liquidity refers to the level of ease at which an asset can be bought or sold.

Cointelegraph has contacted both Bithumb and BitMax for additional comments on the partnership and will update this article if we hear back.

Having suffered at least three crypto hacks as of March 2019, Bithumb is one of the largest global crypto exchanges by daily trading volume, ranked the 8th-biggest exchange on Coin360. In mid-January 2020, Bithumb announced its intention to litigate a $69 million tax bill from South Korea’s National Tax Service.

In September 2019, Cointelegraph reported on the alleged difficulties with payments in a deal to acquire Bithumb exchange. While the deal’s viability remained unclear, unnamed Chinese and American investors were reportedly considering acquiring Bithumb at the time.

A New Partnership Lets Institutional Investors Play OTC Crypto Markets

UK-based crypto lending and liquidity provider B2C2 is teaming up with SFOX, a leading U.S. crypto company serving institutional investors, according to a Feb. 12 press release.

This partnership is aimed at letting SFOX clients (including asset managers, family offices and high net worth individuals) access B2C2’s large liquidity pools and better-priced over-the-counter (OTC) markets though a single point of entry.

Danny Kim, head of growth at SFOX, said:

“We are delighted to partner with B2C2, the largest OTC liquidity provider whose streaming pricing and electronic trading capabilities are relied on by institutional market participants globally. SFOX clients will now benefit from a new source of OTC liquidity coupled with greater price discovery.”

Max Boonen, founder and CEO of B2C2, said:

“Our partnership enables a broader set of market participants to access B2C2’s real-time OTC pricing and deep two-way markets. Much like the FX markets which are almost entirely OTC, the digital asset class is increasingly trading off-exchange, resulting in tighter spreads and deeper liquidity.”

B2C2 is the first OTC trading venue to be added to the SFOX platform. Leadership at both platforms believe that cryptocurrency OTC markets have gained market share from traditional exchanges over the past three years. A report by Aite Group1 predicted that OTC activity would soon account for the majority of cryptocurrency trading volume.

Cointelegraph reported that recent data from Tabb Group shows that the share of United States equities traded off-exchange increased from 34.7% in December 2018 to 38.6% in April 2019. This trend is also being mirrored in Europe, where off-exchange trading accounted for 9.6% of all on-exchange activity for the same period.

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