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Former executives and developers at Morgan Stanley have banded together to launch a crypto derivatives trading platform in Singapore. Called Phemex, the platform is purportedly 10 times faster than traditional crypto exchanges and can handle 300,000 transactions per second, with order entry of less than one millisecond.
The development of the exchange has been spearheaded by Jack Tao, an 11-year veteran who worked for Morgan Stanley and who’s an expert in high-frequency trading. Tao said that despite the exchange being new to the scene, it can go toe to toe with other financial juggernauts, The Block reported.
“These trading metrics are on par with those experienced at some big investment banks like Morgan Stanley. Our matching engine, trading engine, and risk engine were six months in the making, putting the platform technically on par with Nasdaq,” Tao said.
Improving the sector
The exchange offers retail and institutional investors perpetual contracts that are tied with bitcoin (BTC), ethereum, (ETH), Ripple (XRP), Litecoin (LTC), and EOS, with up to 100 times leverage. Perpetual contracts are similar to futures contracts but have a few key differences, including the removal of an expiration date.
Tao admitted that the crypto derivate scene is saturated. However, with some major exchanges constantly getting into hot water, Tao believes that there is room for improvement in the sector, an issue that Phemex aims to address. He also told The Block his reason behind the decision of jumping from traditional finance to the digital space.
A plan for growth
“First, we believe that the derivatives market has great potential for growth, this belief was supported by our research during the initial stages of Phemex. Second, coming from traditional finance, where technical standards are considerably higher, we see plenty of room for improvement.”
So far, the exchange has attracted around 2,000 users. Tao said that their target figure is 20,000 by the first half of the fiscal year. There are also plans to tap into other markets and the exchange is hard at work in raising funds for these expansions.
