Omniex Bolsters Crypto Trading Platform

Omniex has announced additional features in its crypto trading platform for institutional investors, and has revealed the names of its initial clients, including Galaxy, OSL, Circle, Jump Trading, IP, BKCM, Crescent Crypto, DV Chain, and Wyre.

Omniex Edge enables professional investors to gain exposure to crypto assets and provides services for portfolio management, risk management, investment operations, compliance and execution management.

Hu Liang, co-founder and CEO of Omniex and former managing director at State Street, explains that Omniex Edge was founded in 2017 based on the lack of trading infrastructure and technology available within the digital space to access venues and make over-the-counter trades. Headed by executives from traditional trading backgrounds, the platform now offers access to 10 crypto exchanges and up to eight OTC desks through a single interface.

“From the very beginning we wanted to create this infrastructure to connect people [to venues and OTC desks] so that you can trade crypto the same way that you can trade an existing asset class, whether it is equities, currencies, commodities or futures” says Liang. “So you can use a single interface to bypass anything that is manual or in a non-electronic format and get best execution.”

Clients can tap into Omniex’s execution management system (EMS) through its FIX API, algorithms or its GUI. As part of the EMS, the platform will also provide algorithmic execution and smart order-routing services.

The company plans to build out the platform’s connectivity infrastructure to other venues and OTC desks. This will involve modernizing and automating trading operations such as the transfer of communications between counterparties.

Omniex is also developing a data platform for providing data analytics on crypto asset trading to institutional firms. Liang says there is demand from asset managers for data services on crypto activity, especially across areas such as OTC trading where data is less tracked because orders are made over the telephone, messenger apps, and Skype. He adds that the broker-dealer industry is an area that the firm will seek to target as it continues to build out the platform.

“The broker-dealer industry is a client segment that we want to go after, and it is a perfectly natural extension to the current platform that we have today,” he says.