World’s Largest Crypto Wallet Provider, Blockchain Launches A Crypto Exchange Platform, The PIT

The largest Bitcoin wallet provider in the world Blockchain has now ventured into the crypto exchange market and is bullish that high speed of its platform will be a major selling point.

The new platform will be referred to as PIT and has been in the pipeline for more than one year, the company stated. The platform will complement with Blockchain’s wallet business that enables approximately 40 million users in the globe to store, send or receive various forms of digital assets comprising of Bitcoin CoinDesk reports.

According to Blockchain’s head of trading products, Nicole Sherrod, the firm is banking on speed to help it beat the intense competition in the market. Sherrod explained that while rival crypto exchanges have “millisecond” matching engines, The PIT plans to host a “microsecond” one.

The company is also hopeful that the size of its wallet business will help its exchange platform to be a big hit with less time. Currently, its wallet clients send millions of dollars worth of trading flows to external exchange venues, will keep those flows within its platform.

Blockchain CEO, Peter Smith explained:

“Folks are logging in to transfer their funds to outside exchanges. This will help us pull them deeper into our ecosystem.”

To attract more customers within a short stint, the platform will offer lower fees than some of the competitors such as Coinbase and Gemini.

In the recent past, Blockchain has seen some of its highly experienced executives leaving the company. It started with the departure by former ITG executive Jamie Selway, who departed the firm as its head of institutional markets after just five months of joining. It was alleged that his believe on OTC and custody was a major issue with other executives. Two more executives left Blockchain, including Goldman alum Breanne Madigan, who was head of institutional sales and strategy at the firm, and former UBS software developer Daniel Cullender, who played a key role in building out Blockchain’s liquidity aggregation system.

However, the firm can still boast of a number of experienced officials who have worked on Wall Street for years including Sherrod, who joined the firm from TDAmeritrade, as well as Tom Haller, previously the chief architect for trading systems at the iconic New York Stock Exchange. In addition, Charles McGarraugh, who spent 16 years at Goldman Sachs, is the firm’s current head of institutional markets.

Will Speed be a Major Aspect?

Blockchain is not the only exchange is focusing on speed. One of the early entrants in the crypto exchange market, Bitstamp, recently announced that it was looking to increase its speed of order matching by 1,200 times, in partnership with exchange technology provider Cinnober.

LMAX Digital, a subsidiary of London exchange group LMAX, also operates a high-frequency, low latency cryptocurrency exchange venue.

However, some industry experts have played down the aspect of high speed with CoinRoutes CEO Dave Weisberger, a former high-frequency trading executive, saying that most of the traders are not ready for high frequency/low-latency matching engines, but rather are more interested in services tied to block and over-the-counter or OTC trading.

As for the new crypto exchange in the market, PIT, it is now open to users in more than 200 countries, with 26 trading pairs initially, including BTC, Ether (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), and stablecoins Tether (USDT) and Paxos Standard (PAX). It supports deposits, withdrawals, and fiat-to-crypto trading in the U.S. dollar, euro and sterling pound. According to Blockchain plans are underway to rapidly add more trading pairs and cryptos in the near future.

Do you think high speed will spur the PIT crypto exchange above the competitors in the market? Let us know in the comments section.