Hello and welcome to another episode of fintech focus TV powered by Harrington star global leaders in financial technology recruitment head over to harringtonstar.com where you'll be able to see some of the greatest jobs in financial technology recruitment across the world you'll also be able to find aHost of insight to help you grow your brand your team your network and your career you can see the latest Financial technology salary survey you'll be able to download the issue of the financial technologists focusing on the appetite for disruption and our latest top 1 workplace Awards will be out at the endOf this year if you work for a company that's a great place to work in financial technology we want to hear from you enjoy the show and I'll see you soon Thank you hello and welcome to another episode of fintech focus TV with me Toby bad today I am absolutely delighted to introduce you to a company that I've been really interested in reading about over the last couple of days is crossover markets and uh Brandon Anthony how are you bothYeah thank you for having us absolutely pleasure listen great to see you we're crossing the uh Atlantic here with uh with one of you in in America one of you over here in the UK um lots of change lots of opportunities over here at the moment sounds like anExciting journey to get into we're going to get into all of that we're going to find out all about what you're doing I think it's very exciting very pioneering where you're at at the moment so I'm looking forward to explaining all that to everyone who's watching at the momentBut before we get into all the meats of it let's kick off at the start um Brandon and to introduce yourselves sure so on Brand mobile Hill uh co-founder and CEO of crossover markets and just to get a little bit of background for myself Anthony and I have similar backgrounds both in foreignExchange for over 18 years so we are Trad Phi folks uh I started a retail broker called fxcm which was an institution that provided FX and cfd trading predominantly to retail clients to start and then in time we launched an Institutional business that we called fxc and ProI ran that business globally we had a wholesale business which did over a trillion a year in volume and that was predominantly FX and index cfd contracts we had a market Data Business we had a prima Prime business we had an ecn business and Anthony and I worked very closelyFor on two different stints at fxcm Pro running those various business lines roughly six years ago Anthony and I both left and went to Jeffrey's to really re-kick start an fx Prime brokerage business at the time Jeffries was clearing something like 20 000 trades a year or something in that neighborhoodAnd by the time we left we were clearing 200 to 300 000 trades per day one so of the various things that we've done through our career I would highlight that we have extensive knowledge base in retail flows extensive knowledge base market makers and systematic hedge fundsAnd that's those are some of the client types that led us to that level of growth and I think that'll give some good background to some of the things we'll touch on in this call but I'll pause there and let Anthony talk about where we've diverged in our career yeah sure so umMy name is Anthony mazzares I am also co-founder and chief commercial officer of crossover markets um Brandon and I started our careers really at the same time uh back in 2004-ish um working for fxcm so out of college I started working at fxcm on the institutional side in salesUm so worked at fxcm really within a number of different facets of the business always front office but always sort of sales and trading side um in 2010 I left fxcm and Brandon and joined Citibank where we launched an fx trading business called cityfx Pro andLater on cdfx trade stream and both of those businesses were designed for mid-market and high net worth institutional clients trading on margin so rather than trading on credit these were these are margin trading plans uh most of which were sort of high frequency to Mid frequency trading over an API or trading overAlways trading electronically over one of the systems that we offered um so really incubated that business and built it up from really a startup within the bank to uh probably a top five um liquidity provider in the space to the client segment so build that business from 2010 to 2015 and then asAs fate would have it we the Citibank sold the business to fxcm uh so I actually helped transition the business uh from City to fxcm where I joined where I actually went with the clients in the business and the tech to fxcm and actually joined back together with Brandon where we started workingTogether again on the same desk so that was that was fun uh so work on the institutional business fxm pro after the city transition and then Brennan and I left fxm together and joined Jeffries where I ran sales globally for FX brand brokerage so Mr Brenda mentioned most of thoseClients there were were retail Brokers or sort of high frequency systematic shops so um I think we're really proud of the the job that we did at Jeffrey's because it was a really small unknown business and we built that business into uh definitely a top 10 FX Prime broker onThe street so really excited really proud of what we did there and then uh last year we we left Jeffries and founded crossover markets and I now live in London so I moved what a year what a year yeah so I moved from New York toLondon about two months ago so we have a team here in London um London for all sense of purposes are is our headquarters uh and really is the the center for where the most of our head count are and where most of the growth will be for us so I leave theOffice here in London and yeah it's been a fun time to to move to the city tell me a little bit about that sort of decision for why London becomes the head courses for you because uh yeah there's quite a lot of press about that recentlyUm in the space room and actually maybe maybe it's uh you know worthwhile before you answer that question just to give you a little bit of background about crossover markets as well because it's a it's an interesting space you're in that I'm Keen to understand the sort of theLondon-centric move as well from from that too so yeah far away yeah so started the company when we decided to launch crossover markets uh and just a quick background on the business the crossover markets is uh an Institutional only digital asset technology firm um we've we've we've built our technology for forReally to be future proof uh within the institutional Market really for super low latency and high throughput trading of visual assets and ultimately multi-asset trading um when we when we started the company we had felt that the opportunity within digital assets was abroad really outsideThe US so we made the decision to really focus on the international market so it made total sense to move to London because really our entire client base is outside the US mostly European as of right now many of which are here in the UK and even just the the staff thatWe've that we've been able to bring on to the company of all seemed to be London based and that's where we really see the the future of our head count growth as well fantastic and and uh you're looking at looking at that business and and you mentioned a year from having been inVery sort of institutional backgrounds and Brandon you were talking there about the sort of tread Phi uh origins of everything in your career it's a big change right so tell us about the the you know the whole the whole journey of uh of starting up as a training venueAnd sort of learns that you must have had over that time I think for Anthony and I specifically the the biggest change is probably more the difference between working for a large institution and becoming an entrepreneur that's probably been a bigger transition than moving from Track by into cryptoSpecifically yeah you know going through a proper fundraise building a cap table or building a board you know looking at corporate governance um there's just so many things that institutions do uh for employees and for managers that maybe we all take for granted you know when you work for aLarge you know some of them we don't like because it might be bureaucratic but there's a lot that happens when you work for a large institution that's being done by multiple employees or different groups of people and when you start your own company you know you're looking around the roomAnd you're wearing a lot of hats so I think for us that was probably the biggest change um to answer the second part of the question I think that you know we just had this fundamental belief that when we looked at maybe to take a step back and kind of look atAnthony uh Anthony's career in my career when he was at City operating at this business called trade stream and when he was also at fxcm Pro and I was at fxcn Pro what we were effectively offering was a what I would call a wholesale business or an Institutional brokerageOffering and so what that means is you're you're curating liquidity and then you're onboarding clients and you're facing those those clients as a counterparty as a credit counterparty and when we looked at the digital space what we saw is there's effectively there's effectively one operating model and there's retail Brokers that callThemselves exchanges and there's institutional brokers who call themselves exchanges but they're both fundamentally doing the same thing and so what we thought would be disruptive is we thought one it would be absolutely necessary when we heard people say how is institutional volume going to grow and scale in a big way inCrypto everyone goes to regulation as they should we certainly need more clarity there but the second thing that needs to happen is there needs to be a very clear separation between clearing and custody and execution and when that happens for a whole lot of reasons we think volumes will explodeAnd we think fees will compress and the piece that we thought we could bring to the table was this execution layer where we could operate 24 7 365 but do so with equities and foreign exchange order logic and and really bring something to the market that quite frankly does not existSo there are certainly Nuance when we got into crypto the custodial piece is is probably the primary piece that comes to mind that really you have to unpack it's truly different than what you would find in traffic but when you start to get away from custody and you look atWhat's happening today at execution um the central limit order book model when you get to look at the onboarding of customers via retailer institutional and what's happening or needs to happen there when you look at the market making practices you really are seeing very strong parallels between crypto and uh and theTrack fire department so I think for us the learning curve in crypto was there's certainly a barrier there's Nuance there but I I would say that the the biggest barrier is just being an entrepreneur and all the things that come with it yeah I I absolutely agree with that I'mGlad you said it as well because I think people sort of come into it with this sort of Rose tinted glasses of of what can happen and actually seeing that there's a I always talk about my very first job when I started the company and I come out to listed businesses when weWhen we first launched 13 years ago the first thing I ever did was uh clear out a fridge that stank of old milk and uh I thought no no no I've already now I've already made it but the other side of that and I think what you what you'reTalking about with regards to you know the space that you're in particularly coming through from that tradify market is is this this um I guess Exodus from the traditional markets into decentralized Finance is a really um strong population from you know from one to the other because of that sort ofAbility to say right let's take all the things that came out of that those institutions and all that sort of good learning and lessons and regulation as we said before that works out and to allow us to sort of transplant transform something that I think has got justTremendous opportunity to be better and and I think that you know with cross-sex um you know now live Etc uh and that's that's going out there and as you say look it's it's still a relatively early phase of the journey for you as a as a company that's uh early feedback's importantTell us how that's been so um I think the overall feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive lately it's interesting to speak with customers and understand what their expectations were coming into it and the the uh I think customers have been pretty delighted to find out that what we're doing is definitely differentIn a in a central limit order book all to all model there's very little customization available right so if you are a market maker putting a price into a central limit order book you're exposing that price to the entire population of customers trading on that venue it could be a retail clientTrading alongside an hft trading alongside a hedge fund but you're putting one price into the ecosystem and you're sort of exposing it to the to the entire world right so market makers are forced to price to the worst common denominant denominator sometimes to protect themselves so it's beenInteresting to see and working with the market makers specifically around customizing pricing based off of different types of trading flow so if it is a retail broker who has underlying retail customers who trade on an app or just on the on the trading interface then a market maker may be more willingTo show a much tighter price to that client than they would um a systematic hedge fund who trades over an API who cross connects to our servers and is you know able to trade very very quickly and in many times may be unprofitable for the market maker so those two types of clientsBecause the nature of the flow is very different those type of clients should get different pricing it isn't always the same price for everyone so market makers have been really excited to work with us on configuring different streams of liquidity for different types of flow and what that means what we're findingIs that this is a benefit to the the takers of liquidity right because if you're that retail broker you now have access to pricing that is Tighter and and lower costs and tailored really for their flow so they're getting better terms than they would in this just general population of of usersUm so the trading costs come down so ultimately that's what we're looking to achieve right we want the market makers to make money and we want trading costs to come down for the takers of liquidity uh and we believe that this customization segmentation of flow just achieves thatAnd how about validated by early adopters is it yeah mushroom music theory is just you're sort of starting out and launching that yeah exactly and I think even just the level of communication that we've had with our customers is is pretty foreign in the space unfortunatelyUm because some of these changes have so many customers and uh there really isn't much customization there isn't always a ton of dialogue that happens between the market makers and the exchanges or the takers and the exchanges because there's really nothing that can be changed whereas with us everything can beCustomized so I think it's refreshing for participants to be able to pick up the phone and talk to us and we're listening on on what they're actually looking to achieve by trading on our venue and we're actually able to implement it so uh I think even just the level of communication has beenRefreshing for our users I was thinking actually beforehand about you know some of the things that I've seen over the over the you know the last few years of doing this show of of the sort of golden thread to talk about the Golden Threads of companies that areSuccessful within it you mentioned there about actually listening to the users and taking that sort of feedback and do it which I think is obviously a a key sign but also you know sort of solving problems and speed these are all things which I look at I know yeah the the uhVelocity of what you can do is is impressive the speed that you can add to it but also just looking at the the issues within within the space and issues within the marketplace and moving in and you've had you know from startup you probably have one of the mostVolatile sort of periods within the digital asset space that you could possibly have imagined so I love the fact that it's there and you're moving in agile with with all of that sort of thing but and when I go back to the issues and the things you're seeingWe've seen this the digital um digital asset Market structure be something you alluded to it beforehand where there's a lot of uh of um flux in that we're you know it's it's there for a reset I think you guys have spoken about beforehand tell us why that is yeah soThe market reset concept it it kind of this is doubling up on some of the things we talked about um just moments ago which is um maybe it's best to look at it from a maker's perspective so imagine you're a Trad five maker and a very serious shopWho's pricing multi-asset classes and so on and so forth um when you come to crypto one of the things that you learn very quickly is if you want to trade with 300 counterparties you have to settle with 300 counterparties bilaterally and this is operationally inefficient but uh there's lots of friction into itThe increase of operational uh uh air rates and things like this the and it's in its very foreign to the maker which is something that I think was a word that Anthony used previously so the maker in foreign exchange would be accustomed to maybe pricing 300 counterparties but net settling all theActivity with one and this has been our fundamental belief is that if a market maker can do the same thing in crypto and they can trade with 300 counterparties but net settle with one because remember a market maker very often is buying Bitcoin over here and selling Bitcoin over here so they'reMarket flat and from a financing standpoint they want the ability to to be flat and not have to skew or come out of it right and and so this creates uh where crypto has done inadvertently is created kind of a synthetic disease when it comes toPricing right so it has a problem with the stability of pricing at times because of this issue but it also has a problem when we talk about the ability to scale and it's why if you look at the volumes the average daily volumes of crypto they're pretty in a relativelyTight range and the range is almost entirely correlated to volatility and we think there's a huge opportunity for average daily volumes to explode when fungibility which is what we're talking about is brought to the market so the reason for this the reason this has happened is that crypto is uh one ofThe only financial markets where the the market itself was created in retail first right and not normally it's an Institutional space and then retail yeah absolutely starting in reverse and so if you are an institution over the last eight years and you wanted to participate your only choice was toParticipate with an Institutional or retail broker that's the only way you put it and what we're seeing in the in the past maybe four to six months is massive updates on the prime brokerage and the clearing front so you're seeing hidden Road Partners who certainly I think at the Forefront of driving frangibilityHas come out with a whole series of announcements I think including some regulatory things like their SCA licensing and different Partnerships that are exciting you look at sibo digital is in the US and and starting to talk more regularly about their clearing uh there's a there's another company inThe US edx markets just implied that maybe clearing is coming numerous clear token is a product that's not here today but it's that's a product that's being discussed and so this is really attracting the type of uh Market participants and style flows and behavior that that we champion becauseIt promotes operational efficiency uh drive volume and ultimately lowers cost so for us I mentioned before we care about the execution layer and where we think we can be very disruptive is helping to drive down and so there's like there's three ways you drive down the cost of trading oneIs through fungibility which is through the prime brokerage fees number two is through the customization things that Anthony talked about so if you're a market maker and you can provide a custom price for every user we have on the platform yeah you can be more aggressive for the style of flowsThat you like and then third is speed so when you think of speed normally the the feedback Anthony and I get when we start talking about speed and you know 5 to 20 microseconds people kind of roll their eyes but what they're not capturing is we agree that directly maybe the marketIsn't quite ready to take advantage of five microseconds but the market isn't grasping though is your spread and your cost of trading is correlated to speed right if you can come to our platform and get 20 to 50 price updates in the time it takes you to get one price update with aCompetitor who are you going to be able to to be more aggressive right we've used this analogy a million times if you're sitting there on your computer buying an airline ticket and you know it your price refreshes every minute and your neighbor price updates every 15 minutes who's going toGet a better price of course speed does matter when it comes to costs yeah and so I think for us this is where the timing is now appropriate um where what we thought would come to fruition is coming to fruition and the final piece I would add to it is justUh we thought this was going to happen naturally anyway this was a story that Anthony and I and Vlad our third co-founder we were talking about a year ago with certain investors um but what's kind of escalated it is the fact that you know the offensive FTX forced every all the institutions toReconsider uh credit counterparty risk yeah SEC fines and just regulatory pressure is causing everyone to rethink who are the counterparties that they're facing um and the result has been people of most institutions have reduced the number of counterparties uh that they've faced um and so and then the bankingCrisis we saw with with that included to feature in silvergate just expanded this and so what we're seeing is our thesis of what we thought would happen naturally is happening but it's happening now at a much faster uh clip and so from our view vantage point the market is going through a prettySignificant reset where the institutional Market is saying no no we're going to trade in this market we are going to participate in a big way but we're going to do it in a market structure that makes more sense to us than kind of The Brokerage model so I'mVery interested in in that because you know as we sort of you know joked about earlier on the timing wise of your your sort of foray into this is entrepreneurs into a digital asset space you know would have been interesting to some to some extent because it could have beenCan you know in some ways have been at a worse time but actually from what you're saying there I guess it's almost like the perfect time to be yes we don't see a movie into that space right yeah yeah and it so we would not haveBeen able to launch our business if the concept of prime Brokerage in crypto didn't exist yeah and so in order to gain access to our platform process you have to have a credit sponsor so you have to have a prime broker so in just by way of example a client would have aPrime brokerage account at say hidden Road uh hidden Road and onboard them they provide this customer credit to deal on our platform and they're essentially sponsoring a client to trade on our system and match against another participant within our ecosystem anonymously um two clients match we report thatTrade to Hidden Road or prime broker and then the prime broker does post-trade settlement so we don't face clients from a credit perspective we don't have counterparty risks we're not principal um the client has a as a prime brokerage relationship and we're just matching trades anonymously so the this concept of separation betweenExecution and custody or prime brokerage it it it a requirement was that there needs to be prime Brokers to to be able to support this so it's a it's a smart point you brought up because a year ago hidden Road were around and they were they were strongly offeringPrime brokerage but it was still relatively immature so the the maturity of clearing in the space has certainly been accelerated by some of the market events over the last year and um we think it's skewing obviously more towards traditional Market shorter and that's and we Champion that becauseThat's where we think we play well in in the ecosystem I absolutely agree I think everything that I've been reading hearing talking to people about very much points that sort of thing and it's this sort of interesting sort of state of flux where we've got sort of um different venues inIn digital assets and and that sort of evolves to become you know more and more significant um yeah I think I think as you guys said pretty off camera you know now more than ever thoughts just what you mean by that and why why it matters to how we referTo different venues at the moment yeah this is a big point for me right now which is the the idea is that we call all these Brokers exchanges and and that's fine and you know but but in spirit there's a it's very problematic on multiple fronts and IGive you one extreme example when FTX was having its challenges at least for the first two days in the U.S uh from the news I was watching there were literally headlines of will Bitcoin survive which to me showed me the Market's not really understanding the relationship ofWho is doing what for example uh if a us-based stock broker just overnight became insolvent for any number of reasons we wouldn't be talking about the survivability of Apple um they're just not related right what it means is another exchanger broker is going to come in and pick up marketShare yeah I think more specifically the the reason that it matters is that one is on the regulatory front right now when you look at a lot of the quote unquote exchange licenses they address things like Capital accuracy and uh marketing disclosures the rules of stakingUm you know the the separation of the different business models that an exchange might run and really what they're doing is they're addressing things that a broker would be familiar with right if you're a licensed broker in the US or in the UK or where have you these are the things you're thinkingAbout right these are the things that if you're regulated you already do right the separation of client money and operating cash these are not things that an execution venue or a quote-unquote actual exchange would go get a license for right typically a trading venue is is really concerned about simply the orderExecution the rule book making sure participants understand the Rules of Engagement of how to trade um the protection of things around that like uh penetration testing and cyber security and so on and so forth but we're not for example a crossover we don't hold client assets right we're notInvolved in the exchange of assets we're not counterpartied to any trades so the exchange license doesn't necessarily make life sense to us because it's not an actual exchange license we would argue it's a brokerage license right so um I think that these semantics have real life implications and and I alsoThink uh if we start thinking of exchanges as brokers it really starts to better demonstrate why we think the market is going where it is I I just think it you know and I'll give you one more example you know when you look at where a bank trades foreign exchange contracts day inAnd day out they don't do it through a retail broker yeah right they're trading in the inner Bank Market uh with the other banks with other some non-bank makers through ecns and various trading venues they're not traditionally trading with a retail broker unless they're a market maker to that brokerSimilar uh similarly if you look at like Equity flows you know Morgan Stanley it isn't opening an account with an American retail stock broker to trade equities right they're trading in in this concept is so foreign and so obvious to us and in crypto it doesn't quite smack UsIn the face because we call these companies exchanges rather than Brokers yeah yeah so I think that's one example of uh semantics but uh I've got more but I'll we'll keep it there it's hilariously put as well when you when you when you sortOf put that at the start to say that the uh yeah I guess everyone were calling for the the death of Bitcoin from that's that's that sort of uh that sort of standpoint when you put it the other way and just talk talk about it it suddenlyBecomes so obvious doesn't it I've never actually had someone sort of Illustrated in such a sort of clear clear manner with that I think one of the other areas that's really interesting about this the sort of um uh you know going back to that sort of uh convergence of tradeFine D5 markets is one of the things that's been a real lure uh for people moving from you know the traditional space has been the the vast sort of uh opportunity and excitement about technology that sits behind everything within this and it's been uh I've spokenTo many people over the last few years who are interested obviously in the asset class itself and crypto and such like but the real lure just goes into the action underlying technology that come you know that comes behind it and there's lots of different approaches to itUm there's lots of different ways of doing it but I imagine every company that's going to sort of uh be setting themselves up are very very much looked at the tech that's behind it so talk to us about your your sort of approach on technology and and uh and how you're building itUm you know for institutional users specifically Anthony drive it home but I think that the things the piece that in this started way back for Anthony and I uh uh this was two years ago when we were looking at the space the the fact that 24 7 365 trading isJust a minimum barrier to entry in crypto is really interesting right you get you have to do that if you want to play the game right you get no extra credit that's just minimum barrier and when you think about it in foreign exchange the technology operates 24x5And typically every day at the end of the day the tech normally goes down for anywhere five minutes to 30 minutes is is typical um for a whole number of reasons and then it's closed on the weekends and that's where a lot of updates and enhancements happenIn equities it's the same concept only it's you know kind of eight to five type of environment and it's down every single day and when you look at and you know coming from the experience we have in our CTO we should highlight was 25 plus years in equities operating andBuilding various trading venues and then he did 10 years at foreign exchange where he was uh building and operating fast match which sold to euronex um yeah he he would be the first to tell you and we can tell you from our experience it's really difficult to take institutional Dart pools or ecnsAnd adapt them 24 7 365. yeah so the first thing we would just say right off the bat is the idea to build that type of a a of technology that does not need to go down that truly in time could be multi-asset we thought would be really reallyPowerful and so at a super high level that's probably the first I still have probably the easy one and so you've got to drive it drive that home now right yeah so what I'd say on the technology is that it's it's obviously an exciting space right there's there's manyDifferent so so crypto is such a broad category in that there's so many different products within that sort of uh hang off of uh other other core businesses within crypto or sort of services to crypto right we're we're on the trading side so that's where we are we're solely focused soUm where we really felt that there was a gap in the market was was the performance of the technology of the kind of the current ecosystem and that's not that's not speaking negatively to any of our peers or competitors or any of the venues outThere it's more that a lot of the venues that at least on the institutional side that have that are servicing institutional clients and this isn't just crypto this is really broad across the market they're not brand new right it's it's rare that you have an entirely new trading system built from scratch inIn the year 2022 or 2023 right so we did have the luxury of building our technology from scratch in C plus using um modern development techniques using the latest Hardware um and having a team that has Decades of experience doing this exact thing right so we we built our technology really toBe the fastest and highest throughput system in the market so I think Brandon mentioned before we're executing trades sort of sub 20 micros that's what we advertise in reality we're probably probably faster than that um we have you we have the ability to process millions of Trades per secondUm so that comes especially in handy when we are targeting and supporting retail brokers who have in some cases millions of underlying retail clients so when a mean Point gets hot and something goes on Twitter everyone does the exact same thing at the exact same time and tradesAnd so the infrastructure needs to be able to handle these extreme bursts of messages really within within the same second so we built the system to be able to support that um and you know it it market makers like it and takers of liquidity like it because market makers have the abilityTo print quotes to us in single digit micros they have the ability to cancel or change their quotes in just as fast so there's less risk of a stale quote sitting on an exchange because the The Exchange didn't have the time to wasn't fast enough to to replace that quote andThe market data that takers get from our pricing is is very rich right we're able to print many many many quotes inside of any single quote on another venue so they're getting lots of information in between every single tick on some of the other exchanges in the market whichLeads to Better Price Discovery and better accuracy for their for their system so we've been just solely focused on being the the highest performance and fastest Tech in the market and yeah maybe it's it's a little bit of Overkill right now the speed is it's obviouslyVery fast and maybe some of the clients aren't able to take advantage of it just yet but we think the market is maturing very quickly and we've built this system for the future so um yeah we're very happy with what we've accomplished so far it sort of remindsMe and excuse me this is ignorant but it goes back to sort of 10 years ago in electronic trading when there was the race to zero latency and uh you know fpga and everything's sort of being pushed into that so that sort of area to look at Brandon you mentioned beforeAbout this sort of uh you know cost reduction through speed but I think also it's about as much about the the efficiency of cost reduction and and removal of that it's also about the the enhanced productivity that can come through from that and and uh I've said aNumber of times recently where where there's so much pressure on companies with with narrowing margins to increase the you know the one thing that you can do is increase the productivity to you know to increase the margins from that and I think this is to me where speedComes into it with with tech and uh yeah as you say if it's ahead of the game I think that game only catches up with that very very quickly and I think the acceleration of everything at the moment means that that's uh that's that's coming into playAll right to think about so think about a retail consumer in almost any asset class right so if you want to trade equities you should open it you deposit collateral and then you can buy some some stocks right um if you want to same thing for anExchange I want to I'm sitting in London let's say I want to open an account with IG right and I open the account I collateralize it I can buy some foreign exchange or CFT contracts and the same is true of crypto and this is you know ICall this a brokerage model but it's another way to think of it is it's it's what we call closed loot it's a captive model so by definite if Toby if you open an account with your whatever I use coinbase for example um if you open an account with companyBase and you buy Bitcoin by definition of doing one trade with coinbase you're actually they are guaranteed to get two trades out of you because when you go to close you're not going to close it somewhere else you're going to close it on coinbase right so this is captiveAnd in the in the in the retail world this is completely this is the operating model this is how it works again Anthony and I going back 20 years ago this is where we cut our teeth with as in the retail brokerage model but in institutional TradingYou know a different way to think about it is in retail trading if Toby if I get you as a client I'm expecting 100 of your business yeah right you're either my client or someone else's there's no in between but institutions don't behave that way right likeUm if you look at a market maker whoever you want to pick Citadel or virtue or you know you go right down the list when these people trade foreign exchange they trade over 10 venues right and they trade equities they're trading over a countless uh counterparties and everyone's competing for two percentSeven percent market share because it's just not realistic that you're going to get an institution to do all of their business over you that's not how institutions behave and the point you were just making about efficiency that's part of the efficiency uh loop and the only way to participate in that growthCan maybe be a leader in uh making that growth happen but also participating as the growth happens is to really put kind of your your draw your Line in the Sand to say I'm either a clear I'm a custodian I'm a market maker I'm a venueBe who you need me but trying to be all of those things yeah our experience just flat out will not work in the institutional space at least yeah and I think that's where a big part of where this convergence is so necessary right because I think the last you knowThe last few years have absolutely borne that out and proved proved exactly why that needs to be the case and I guess that sort of leads into the whole regulatory bit if you know if you're looking at at the sort of uh you know the main drawer of of Trad finds D5 canBe about that sort of technology and and the you know the opportunity that comes in if you're looking at defies um desire to bring in Trad fights about regulation and um you know I've spoken a lot recently about you know restoring trust in the space I've spoken a lot aboutUm you know how that sort of happens now it moves further forward and a lot of it is down to to you know in my mind the whole sort of uh you know trust is built through communication and communication is built through Clarity um and and I know that's something youGuys think think a lot about as well right yeah I mean we don't you know I would say and this is just my opinion specifically but on the just to take a tap into the defy space real quick I I think there's a lot of reason to beOptimistic long term and I think there's equally a lot of reasons to be very pessimistic in the short to medium term the D5 piece not being examined is everyone I think is overly focused on the technology related to addressing concerns of compliance so these questions of how do you know yourCustomer how do you AML how do you do all these things appropriately and when you go to different conferences you'll see on stage a lot of people but I I don't think the technical piece is the uh is the actual concern when you look at what western Regulators areDoing right and I say Western because I'm not just talking about the us but the FCA often right and Asic and Australian the jfsa it's more than just the technology piece around AML and compliance it's also getting their pound to flesh so imagine some bad actor comes onto a D5 protocolAnd starts trading and you know they're doing some level of wash trading for nefarious purposes someone else is making money on these trades and ultimately when you look at what the regulator wants it isn't just the ability to know and understand and capture that there's a problem they wantThe ability to financially do harm to go after someone who's on the other side of that activity and and and and invoke a fine or penalties right they want their pound to flash and this is a major piece not being discussed or in my opinion being resolved in the defy space andIt's amazing to me it's the one area where the two pieces are diverging not converging and so I think that that's a piece that needs to change I think everything else though when you look at the space is totally converging yeah in a massive way and I just think fiveYears from now we're not no one's gonna be talking about Trad fying crypto you're just doing crypto or you're not right um and uh into the and we already should know this to some degree when you look at CNBC or Bloomberg and you watch the ticker you'll see apple and euro dollarAnd you'll see Bitcoin and no one's making on the ticker some distinction you're just looking at different assets and the prices and so I think a lot of this jargon is in time gonna go uh the way the dinosaur uh and so we we definitely agree that they'll be thatThis convergence is happening now and and this is what we can call it defy this is all just Finance yeah yeah how you can be in finance tomorrow and we can do crypto together or foreign we can do whatever you want they're not really separate things it's the establishmentOf a genuine new assay class in into the into the traditional isn't it and that's that's yeah as you say look traditional only it was what was once disruptive that's the very nature of it all isn't it and that's that's where we're heading so um it's a fascinating thing I'm reallyExcited to to yeah to watch your journey and see where you're going and as we as we release this it'll be sort of pushing towards the uh you know the final quarter of the year and and such like that's an exciting sort of place for youGuys to it to be I'm sure that uh yeah I think someone someone explains sort of months as dog years at the moment in the uh the space that you guys sit in but you know a lot can uh pass between when we film this and when it when it comesOut but if we're looking at that and seeing where where you guys are heading uh where you know crossover are going to focus your energies for the rest of the year and what 2024 looks like you know for you you're in the team tell us a little bit about that well our appetiteExcite us give us the grand finale or we uh I think we've got uh two if not three major Partnerships to announce that will both fire until the fall um but really excited about these announcements that are coming out um and uh I think that's the first thingThat we would need with I think secondly I think we're going to surprise people on our trade count and trading volumes Anthony's team is doing a great job uh the the demand for the size of our team at times has been has been challenging uh we have no shortage of customers and onboardingThat we're trying to quickly get to uh you know the trading so I think that's a a second thing I think a third thing is just a whole thing a whole topic around Tech various uh uh order logic behaviors the way Liberty management happens but then also some of the physical HardwareOur expansion geography geographically into different data centers um to give clients a better service in that regard and then the last thing I think probably relates direct directly to Anthony himself uh Anthony moved isn't you know his wife and kids and the dog from New York to London and uh thatWasn't a trivial thing that was very thoughtful and there's a whole variety of reasons he did that but but certainly atop that is when we think about talent and hiring and bringing people in-house we are really thinking about kind of the European theater broadly but specifically London and tapping intoThat market But continuing to build out the team there there's some extraordinary Talent over here and and uh yeah actually you you probably have seen that that together I think is a really exciting sort of uh environment for it and we're seeing a government there that's very sort ofCommitted to this space and trying to make it as easy as possible for people to do business so I want to tell us about that move so so the wife and kids and dog have settle it we know we know you're near a big parks they must beLoving that the dog in particular chasing deer all around Richmond but uh as as how's the move been for you it's been great yeah we've uh luckily we we moved about two months ago it was right at the start of the summer we had beautiful weather I kind of joked withEveryone didn't last for a long before you did it yeah well I could have joked with everyone and say why is everyone complain about the weather so much in London this is fantastic but I uh it's I think it's kind of gotten back to normalHere now but uh yeah it's it's been an it's been an amazing move wife and kids are loving it the dog absolutely loves it um unfortunately he he had a little hiccup uh on the on the flight over he was detained for a day so he was uh heWas an outlaw for a day but we were customs and uh happy to report that he is home and happy but uh yeah the move has been great and uh I I really Echo what you say about the talent pool here in London I we're actively hiring we areActively looking for candidates in all roles and I'm so impressed by the level of talent um specifically here in London with not only your prior experience for working in traditional firms and crypto native firms but really the excitement for for the crypto market and and the industryAnd and they sort of see our vision without seeing without too much pitching um right there's a lot of people who want to get into this space I think there's people who've been in yeah we'll go back to that were traditional but they've been in nice traditional environment yesWe've felt a little bit stagnant from it and it's just yeah to have that sort of level of excitement and passion and vision of what it can be and where it can go that was probably dampened you know for you know for a couple of months in theBack end of last year I think that that sort of hunger is very much back and we you know our day job as you as you may know is as a recruitment business in this but in this sector and uh we're seeing we're seeing a real appetite forPeople you know every single day knocking at the door wanting to wanting to move into that sort of area so it's an exciting time for everyone involved um gentlemen it's been an absolute pleasure I really appreciate you coming on the show I'm going to finish just by askingUh you know there'll be lots of people who are watching this both there's people who want to you know look and talk and join your business as much as people want to find out more and and engage with you clients customers everything in between tell me um tell meWhat's the best way to get in touch with them what should they be looking at I I think I think best way to get in touch so our website is crossovermarkets.com um we're all on LinkedIn so feel free to reach out to us individually on LinkedInOr just shoot us an email from from our contact information on the website uh we're always excited to have a conversation with either somebody who's interested in having getting a job with us or working with us or a new client who potentially has questions on what we can offer so weWe welcome people reaching out to us and we are very very well we're very receptive to to uh cold contact good man excellent stuff well Brandon Anthony thank you so much for coming on the show I really appreciate it really good to get to know you hear a littleBit more about the business and uh yeah I love that sort of Journey that you're on at the moment that sort of starts up phase and seeing where it goes and I can't wait to see the uh the continued rise and Rise of the company so really appreciate you both coming on todayThank you for having us Toby appreciate it absolute pleasure and thank you all for watching we will see you soon on another episode of fincept focus TV thanks a lot foreign