Vela Adds CoinMarketCap to SuperFeed for ‘Secure, Resilient’ Crypto Data

New York-based datafeed and trading technology provider Vela has integrated cryptocurrency data provider CoinMarketCap’s API with its SuperFeed consolidated datafeed to provide institutional clients with a normalized source of crypto information in the same format—and via the same delivery mechanism—as “traditional” sources of market data.

Vela officials say the partnership was driven by growing interest in the crypto markets in general, but specifically by institutional trading and investment firms’ need for a crypto data offering that conforms to the same standards as data from the more than 100 other markets and institutional data sources carried on SuperFeed.

“We continue to see increased discussion and interest in the crypto space, and there are a number of more institutional-focused initiatives evolving within the wider market—for example, the establishment of Archax as an institutionally focused crypto exchange—that mean we believe this is the right time to start to offer our clients access to data from this innovative new digital currency sector… [but] it is clear that delivery of this data needs to conform to the stringent standards that the institutions expect as per their other ticker plant solutions,” says Peggy Sullivan, chief of staff at Vela. “SuperFeed overcomes the barriers to entry faced by institutions looking to enter this space in a more meaningful way. They need a secure, resilient and managed crypto feed that is delivered to the same level of support and service guarantees as the more traditional datafeeds that institutions are used to… [so] Vela is offering all interested parties easy access to a normalized datafeed with 24/7 global technical service and support.”

Vela will carry data covering the more than 1,800 digital coins and tokens that CoinMarketCap provides data for via its website, but as a streaming feed with more frequent update rates than are available on the website. Firms will be able to access the data via SuperFeed in the Equinix NY2 datacenter in Secaucus, NJ, where many capital markets participants already have a presence co-located with the matching engines of key exchanges and trading platforms. Vela captures the data from CoinMarketCap into its SuperFeed ticker plants in CoinMarketCap’s native protocol at NY2, where Vela’s feed handlers normalize it into the OpenMAMA format used by SuperFeed. Vela then caches the data locally, and trading firms can connect via cross-connects or leased lines to incporporate the data into their instances of SMDS, Vela’s hosted market data platform.

“This solution addresses a number of challenges in this market, providing easy access to a normalized datafeed, 24/7 support, and more frequent updates than the current website. The stability and ease of access makes this an immediate usable product for retail broker-dealers,” Sullivan adds.