The Evolution of Institutional Digital Asset Trading with Talos

1/ In this Fireside Chat at REDeFiNE TOMORROW 2024, @KatzAnton, CEO & Co-founder of @talostrading, discusses the evolution of institutional digital asset trading with @talostrading from @FireblocksHQ.
2/ Katz highlights that crypto is a brand new asset class, unique in that technology is embedded within the asset itself. This presents fascinating opportunities from an engineering perspective.
3/ Talos was founded in 2018 to provide institutions with the ability to trade crypto, connecting to exchanges, OTC desks, and building out the necessary trading tools and infrastructure.
4/ 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. Half of their clients are now on the sell-side.
5/ The key challenges Talos faced were the retail-focused nature of early crypto infrastructure and the need for standardization, safety, and institutional-grade service. Talos built familiar, safe environments for institutions to work with.
6/ While Talos continues to invest in connectivity and algo execution, they've expanded their services to meet the growing sophisticated demands of institutional clients, such as portfolio management and risk management systems.
7/ Talos remains focused on supporting the entire investment lifecycle for their clients. They are one of the few players audited by a Big Four firm, with SOC 2 Type 1 & 2 compliance, multiple licenses, and the ability to support larger institutional contracts.
8/ The approval of Bitcoin ETFs is a significant milestone, signaling regulatory progress and opening doors for new investors. Institutions are now thinking about crypto exposure and portfolio diversification.
9/ Talos is seeing record volumes and inflows, with large traditional firms entering the digital assets space. Their white-label infrastructure is in high demand as more players look to offer crypto trading services to their clients.
10/ Talos views tokenization as the future, aiming to be the investment infrastructure for all digital assets. They are connecting multiple primary issuers to facilitate secondary trading markets for their clients.
11/ On DeFi, Talos has launched support and seen strong demand. They aim to provide access to DeFi liquidity while addressing compliance and safety challenges to meet institutional expectations.
12/ Katz believes DeFi is under the same regulatory umbrella as the broader crypto community, needing to prove it can work with regulators and institutions. He sees the tide turning, with regulators moving towards working with crypto.
13/ Talos announced the launch of portfolio engineering and @cloudwallcap acquisition, giving clients the ability to run quant portfolios, indices, passive portfolios, rebalance, backtest and also plugging in the risk management system to the PMS.
14/ Katz mentioned that customers are demanding high quality data now more than ever. Talos is working on providing reliable data to meet these demands, leveraging their position as a trading platform with high-fidelity data.
15/ Talos is actively working on supporting the trading of tokenized assets for their clients. They are making sure their platform can handle the unique requirements of tokenized securities and other digital assets as this space continues to grow.