The Evolution of Institutional Digital Asset Trading with Talos

The digital asset market is undergoing a significant transformation as major institutions adapt to its evolving landscape. At REDeFiNE TOMORROW 2024, a discussion featuring Anton Katz, CEO & Co-founder of Talos, and Stephen Richardson, Managing Director, Financial Markets, and Head of APAC of Fireblocks, shared the shifting dynamics of institutional digital asset trading and the necessary infrastructure to support broader investment in this asset class.

"Digital assets" are a new asset class with embedded technology, opening up new opportunities for engineering and technological development in this industry.

Who is Talos? What do they do?

Founded in 2018 by Anton Katz and Ethan Feldman, Talos offers solutions that enable financial institutions to easily access digital asset trading by connecting them to OTC desks (over-the-counter trading of digital assets without going through cryptocurrency exchanges) and developing tools for building the necessary infrastructure for digital asset trading.

• Over the past few years, Talos has expanded beyond just trading connectivity and execution to offer data, portfolio management, clearing, settlement, and white-labeling services. Currently, almost half of Talos' clients are on the sell-side.
  
  
• Talos faces challenges as the digital asset infrastructure primarily focuses on retail trading rather than institutional trading. Talos aims to create a user-friendly and secure process for financial institutions.
  
  
• Talos develops connections and algorithmic execution, and they are expanding their services to cater to the growing needs of financial institutional clients, such as portfolio management and risk management systems.
  
  
• Talos focuses on supporting the entire investment cycle of their clients. Talos is one of the few companies audited by a Big Four firm, complying with SOC 2 Type 1 and 2 standards, along with multiple licenses, demonstrating Talos' capability to support larger institutional contracts.
  
  
• Talos has achieved significant success, with record-breaking trading volumes and capital inflows, as large companies from traditional finance also enter the digital asset market. Talos' white-label infrastructure is in high demand as many seek to offer digital asset trading services to their own clients.

Impact of Bitcoin ETFs

Another driving force is the approval of Bitcoin ETFs, marking a significant step that reflects regulatory progress and opens doors for new investors. Financial institutions are considering incorporating digital assets into their portfolios for diversification.

Talos' Perspective on the Future of Digital Assets

Anton Katz, CEO & Co-founder of Talos, discussed the future of digital assets, such as DeFi and tokenization. He sees tokenization as the future and the foundation for investing in all digital assets. Talos, his company, is actively working towards this vision by connecting multiple securities issuers to facilitate client transactions in the secondary market.

• Talos has launched a DeFi-enabled service that is in high demand. They aim to provide access to DeFi liquidity while meeting the regulatory and security needs of institutions.
  
  
• Anton Katz believes that DeFi should be under the supervision of the crypto community and needs to be able to collaborate with regulators and institutions. He also sees regulators adapting to work alongside crypto.
  
  
• Talos' acquisition of Cloudwall Capital and the launch of their Portfolio Engineering solution allows clients to manage quant portfolios, indices, passive portfolios, rebalance investments, backtest and connect risk management systems with portfolio management services.
  
  
• Talos' clients demand higher quality data than ever before, and the company is meeting this demand by utilizing its position as a trading platform with high-quality data.

Talos continues to support tokenized asset trading for clients. They are enhancing their platform to support tokenized securities standards and other digital assets as this market continues to grow.

Watch this on Youtube:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6Dn0dDHw0Y&list=PLJCrobWNqQvucBr0nzT_TQp4D8pZoidYH&index=7