Goldman Sachs-Backed Circle Hires Top FinTech Expert Vishal Gupta to Grow OTC Trading Platform

Circle Hires Top Fintech Expert to Assist with their OTC Trading Platform

In a move that outlines their ambition to become one of the reckoning force in the crypto space, the Circle digital asset trading platform recently hired a prominent executive from the fintech world. Specifically, the exchange hired Vishal Gupta, the former vice president of business development at MoneyLion, a personal finance company. Vishal is the new head of business development and partnerships at Circle.

Although it has existed for only five years, the Circle exchange platform has one of the soundest financial backings of cryptocurrency firms, with Goldman Sachs being of its supporters. According to the company's website, Circle Trade, their over-the-counter trading operation, conducts transactions worth billions of dollars on a monthly basis.

Reportedly, the reason for Gupta’s employment was to use his knowledge of electronic trading that he acquired during his stint at Goldman Sachs to explore new ways of making profits for the Circle platform. Precisely, Vishal will deal with trade cost analysis, a method of evaluating the effectiveness of an investor’s trading actions. Although this mechanism is popular in the equity markets, it has not been equally applied in the crypto space. Nonetheless, its deployment in the cryptocurrency industry is expected to motivate traditional companies who have been wary of investing in digital asset due to their volatility.

The addition of Vishal comes at a time when Circle is improving its over-the-counter trading operation to match the demands of large-scale investors, including hedge funds and family offices. Typically, over-the-counter solutions provide a platform for wealthy investors to trade in crypto assets without impacting on their value, as would be the case if they traded on popular exchanges such as Coinbase and Poloniex. For now, most of the over-the-counter transactions are conducted over phone or Skype. As a result, investors who prefer electronic trading are left out, which is why Circle are working hard on this front.

Earlier in June, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire reiterated that large institutional investors do not like trading over the phone. He added that they intend to shift to a fully electronic platform to onboard more of the wealthy traders. Jeremy also mentioned that electronic trading is faster and offer more flexibility than the current systems.

Lastly, Allaire noted that the number of institutional investors in the crypto space is increasing significantly, despite the bearish run endured by Bitcoin and other altcoins throughout 2018. To this end, Jeremy said that the intuitional clients were increasing by 30% every month.