I would be surprised if this is the case since hfts are getting (already got) into cryptos.
Calling on all professional crypto traders...
- Thread starter patt89
- Start date
Or in the case of DRW they’ve got the smart guys, the hyper $$$$ infrastructure, and they game the market
I traded equities for a long time untill they introduced priority venues I had no access to. It's nice to be the best bid with 10k shares, tape is glowing red hot but you don't get an execution cause you are not allowed to trade on that dark pool.
Together with the ridiculous fees for datafeed - which you had to get since SIP feed aka consolidated tape is useless - the barrier of entry and fixed costs combined with lower profitability ended up being a waste of time for me.
I went over to futures, same problem. You need a membership and enough turnover capabilities to meet the volume tier, meaning you have to trade via a prop shop. Since there is none in my country making pocket change in the treasuries with retail commission did not seem to be very appealing to me.
Thing is, whenever a market dries out somebody tries to install a monopoly. Retailers are gone, so there are no sheep left to fleece. So the big guys are fighting over bread crumps and suddenly weird soap opera stuff happens like Mr. Kandrik of RSJ (biggest futures HFT) becoming Member of the EUREX exchange counsil.
Would I be able to compete against a market participant who has a lobbyist at the exchange to influence the rules in his favour?
At this point I had to be honest to myself and just quit, because I a couple of years later my niche would have been gone.
And then BTC exploded....Boy, it was trading like Bunds when EUREX still was DTB. There is no market were more dumb money trades than crypto.
Also, infrastructure is cheap, commissions are non existent as long as you post quotes and wait to get filled.
I'm a short term trader. I make markets out of an inventory of synthetic instruments. I don't "daytrade" breakouts and shit, why would I?
So to be honest I don't give a flying fk about DRW and other HFT's, that's not my business and I'm actually glad they are here so I have a quote to lean on sometimes. In 3-5 years this opportunity is gone but untill then I enjoy the show.
No need to compete against RSJ in the GE for a half tick.
EDIT: My wishes would be:
- Margin trading
- Margin lending market
- Portfolio margin
- FIX or at least a connection to proper tools like Actant, TT or CQG.
- Customer funds held with a 3rd party custodian.
- BIGGER TICKSIZE (5$ for BTC would be nice)
Together with the ridiculous fees for datafeed - which you had to get since SIP feed aka consolidated tape is useless - the barrier of entry and fixed costs combined with lower profitability ended up being a waste of time for me.
I went over to futures, same problem. You need a membership and enough turnover capabilities to meet the volume tier, meaning you have to trade via a prop shop. Since there is none in my country making pocket change in the treasuries with retail commission did not seem to be very appealing to me.
Thing is, whenever a market dries out somebody tries to install a monopoly. Retailers are gone, so there are no sheep left to fleece. So the big guys are fighting over bread crumps and suddenly weird soap opera stuff happens like Mr. Kandrik of RSJ (biggest futures HFT) becoming Member of the EUREX exchange counsil.
Would I be able to compete against a market participant who has a lobbyist at the exchange to influence the rules in his favour?
At this point I had to be honest to myself and just quit, because I a couple of years later my niche would have been gone.
And then BTC exploded....Boy, it was trading like Bunds when EUREX still was DTB. There is no market were more dumb money trades than crypto.
Also, infrastructure is cheap, commissions are non existent as long as you post quotes and wait to get filled.
I'm a short term trader. I make markets out of an inventory of synthetic instruments. I don't "daytrade" breakouts and shit, why would I?
So to be honest I don't give a flying fk about DRW and other HFT's, that's not my business and I'm actually glad they are here so I have a quote to lean on sometimes. In 3-5 years this opportunity is gone but untill then I enjoy the show.
No need to compete against RSJ in the GE for a half tick.
EDIT: My wishes would be:
- Margin trading
- Margin lending market
- Portfolio margin
- FIX or at least a connection to proper tools like Actant, TT or CQG.
- Customer funds held with a 3rd party custodian.
- BIGGER TICKSIZE (5$ for BTC would be nice)
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All the major US crypto exchanges had 2% of notional value fee no matter if you provide or take. So at 20k BTC it would be $800 round trip. Also to trade across exchanges I would need to create and fund separate wallets. And as you mentioned no leverage, tick size/lot size ridiculously small. I don't know how you can offer liquidity in an instrument which can be so easily manipulated and doesn't correlate to anything. At least once futures were introduced, you could take the other side of that. Gambler's market it seems to me.
Is that true ? Jeeeez...
That info is just plain wrong.
https://support.pro.coinbase.com/customer/en/portal/articles/2945310-fees
https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000526126-What-are-Maker-and-Taker-fees-
https://www.itbit.com/fees
and so on and so forth. In fact, most exchanges, major or not have zero fees for passive orders. Are you sure you even trade crypto? If so, you should probably revise your strategy.
If not, please inform yourself before you post bold claims like that.
Besides that, I'm quite happy nobody figured it out yet XD
I don't trade it. I believe at the time I was looking at it, when it was around 20k, that was the fee structure. I may be wrong though. This space changes quickly.
I don't trade Crypto but from what I understand Trading Technologies can be used for CoinBase. That would kinda suck because of course you would want the DOM windows for all the exchanges up on your execution platform simultaneously. Knowing TT, they would have liked for that to happen but my guess is that CoinBase was the only exchange with the infrastructure requirements able to support TT. I'm sure that DRW has a very customized and proprietary killer platform.