Popular bitcoin wallet company Blockchain unveiled its new cryptocurrency exchange, The PIT, on July 30th.
The coming platform’s main selling points? Its infrastructure has been designed with extreme speed and deep liquidity in mind, so users shouldn’t have to worry about trades being botched by exchange outages or thin order books.
The owners of blockchain.com had started work on the venue last summer. Since then, the company assembled a team of experts from the mainstream finance and tech arenas to actualize The PIT.
As the Blockchain team noted in their Tuesday announcement:
“We built an all-star team of veterans from NYSE, TD Ameritrade, Google, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Interactive Brokers, and Revolut, to build it from the ground-up […] And what we delivered is not only the fastest in crypto by an order of magnitude – we measure in microseconds, not milliseconds – but a matching engine that could go head-to-head against any machine engine in the entire world.”
With that said, the platform has been designed for institutional investors and retail investors alike. The exchange’s immediate prospects will be boosted by the sizable pipeline of Blockchain’s wallet users, of which there are reportedly over 40 million at present.
Notably, these users will be able to use The PIT in a non-custodial manner, i.e. trading right from within their Blockchain wallets and without needing to deposit crypto into a centralized venue first. The company’s trading platform launch is its latest strategic bid to make the Blockchain ecosystem a one-stop shop for all things cryptocurrency.
“Folks are logging in to transfer their funds to outside exchanges,” Blockchain chief executive officer Peter Smith told The Block. “This will help us pull them deeper into our ecosystem.”
With registrations for The Pit having started on July 30th, traders can now sign up for the platform to queue up for onboarding. At launch, nearly 30 different cryptocurrencies will be supported on the exchange.
bitFlyer Turns Attention to Europe
As a European-based operation with a new exchange on the scene, Blockchain will be keeping an eye on its proximate competition. A newcomer fitting that bill is bitFlyer Europe.
Indeed, popular Japanese crypto exchange bitFlyer is looking to gain a foothold well beyond Asia. On July 30th, the European branch of bitFlyer declared it was opening up a basic bitcoin buys and sells service to complement its advanced trading portal, Lightning.
“Not only is bitFlyer Buy/Sell easy to use, but with us users have the confidence that they are using a trusted, regulated platform with long-standing global heritage,” bitFlyer Europe chief operating officer Andy Bryant said.
The European subsidiary was first granted permission to operate in the European Union in January 2018. “When I set up bitFlyer in 2014, I did so with global ambitions,” bitFlyer CEO Yuzo Kano noted at the time.
Switzerland Set to Get First Regulated Crypto Exchange
Zug-based cryptocurrency startup Smart Valor just raised $3.25 million USD in a new fundraising round. Those funds will prove quite useful, since the company also just announced plans to open up the inaugural regulated cryptocurrency exchange in Switzerland.
The Swiss exchange will be complemented by a parallel exchange operation ran out of the small European country of Liechtenstein, the company said.
On the news, CEO Olga Feldmeier highlighted how these pro-crypto countries have hitherto been under-served when it comes to cryptocurrency exchange venues:
“[U]ntil today, ironically enough neither Swiss Crypto Valley nor Liechtenstein had an exchange offering trading and custody of digital assets. Smart Valor is changing this, giving the privilege of stable, safe-haven jurisdiction not only to the rich, but to all.”
Alas, this week the biggest winners seem to be European crypto users, who have a slew of new trading venues to look forward to. Which will prove most popular remains to be seen, of course.
