Several notes from FIX Trading Community meeting

When I have a chance, I usually attending FIX Community Meetings in New York. This is an annual event running by institutions for institutions, a place, where buy- and sell-side firms can share some news, and, of course, pitch each other:)

It was very nice from Mushegh Tovmasyan to join me here.

Besides many interesting topics like MiFID II and OMS/EMS system, there was a panel discussion regarding cryptocurrencies trading called “The Cryptocurrency Wave in the Financial Markets”.

And it was kind of hot — auditorium was full, after-panel discussion with panelist took a while.
And, unlike previous years, it wasn’t a theoretical discussion “what is cryptocurrencies”. People are speaking about very practical things — how to trade in secure, reliable, and familiar to all institutions way.
The industry is waiting for clear clarification from regulators. Well, maybe not necessarily for a 100% clear but at least for a something more-less concrete.

Combined with proper technologies it will open a gate for enormous institutional money flow. The interesting part is that crypto-trading was driven by retail clients initially.

Funny/education facts:
- Fidelity has mining rigs. With an initial investment of 200k its turned out into 2 plus something millions.
- there is a working group inside FIX Trading community, responsible for developing FIX standards for crypto trading
- “REST API over the public Internet is not a language we prefer to speak”

The last one sounds really familiar…. Yes, this is one of the XTRD.IO pitches but this time it comes from one of the managing directors of Goldman Sachs.