LMAX Exchange Group, a London-based exchange company, established the first physical venue for trading cryptocurrencies that will serve institutional traders.
“We are furthering the legitimization of the cryptocurrency market by offering institutions a platform on which to acquire, trade and hold cryptocurrencies with high quality, deep liquidity,” David Mercer, the exchange’s CEO, stated in a press release.
The new product, known as LMAX Digital, aims to serve the portion of its clients that was asking for a way to trade cryptocurrencies with a high level of trust and credibility.
“We are perfectly positioned to address the gap in the market for a robust physical cryptocurrency exchange operating with institutional liquidity. Over $10 trillion of fiat has been traded in our exchanges to date, and we have institutional clients in over 100 countries… The rise of institutional trading of cryptocurrencies will be a game-changer for the industry. We believe our new exchange will support the transformation of the crypto market from the fringes to the mainstream,” Mercer added.
It’s not enough to offer a product, however, if one wishes to make cryptocurrencies mainstream products. The problem that the crypto world faces is one of volatility. To counter this volatility, there needs to be a significant amount of trading volume, far higher than what Bitcoin—the current heavyweight champion—offers for the time being.
In a conversation Cryptovest had with Simon Grunfeld, Ibinex’s founder, we came to an agreement that this was by far the most important counterweight against massive price swings as we saw at the beginning of the year.
“On a foreign exchange you’re talking about a 5 trillion dollar daily turnover. Cryptos are nowhere near that at this point. So, in order to see smooth trends, relatively speaking, from a daily perspective or a weekend perspective, you just need to have a lot more volume,” Grunfeld told us.
If LMAX manages to gather enough institutional interest, we might very well see a significant uptick in some cryptocurrencies’ trading volumes. And if that happens, we should see these coins start being seen as tools of trade in mainstream markets.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
