Institutional cryptocurrency exchange LMAX Digital will start publishing its daily trading spot volumes, the exchange said on Tuesday, potentially challenging the dominance of benchmarks administered by independent industry aggregators.
The move coincides with the surge in crypto trading activity from institutional investors across LMAX’s platforms, which averaged $250 million per day over the last five months. The solid turnover comes on the heels of higher volatility in the market and growing demand from a combination of proprietary trading firms and Asian brokers, the company says.
In June, over $8.6 billion was transacted on the LMAX Digital crypto exchange, marking a new record for the platform. A month earlier, a record high of over $400 million in daily spot volumes was achieved on May 12. These monthly figures are three times more than April’s volumes, which stood at $2.2 billion.
LMAX Digital head Jenna Wright said that placing trading volumes in the public domain will enhance the quality of market information available to investors and provide a clear picture of the true size of the spot cryptocurrency market.
“Being able to access real time spot trading volumes, based on deep institutional Liquidity from a regulated spot cryptocurrency exchange, will further enhance the quality and accuracy of market information and price discovery,” added David Mercer, CEO of LMAX Exchange Group.
LMAX Digital is part of the foreign exchange trading business of the LMAX Exchange Group, which operates FX execution venues such as LMAX Exchange (FCA regulated MTF) and LMAX Global (FCA regulated broker).
LMAX Digital operates under similar rules and governance of its parent’s FCA-regulated multilateral facility (MTF), and its functionality is based on the venue’s existing technology stack. It offers to trade digital assets at the request of its existing institutional client base.
Simply matching buyers with sellers within an anonymous execution venue, LMAX Digital offers its users better price discovery and conflict-free execution in major Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and Bitcoin Cash.
LMAX Digital also offers cryptocurrency custodian services to clients who trade on its exchange, which solves one of the major problems that have prevented institutional investors from dabbling in the virtual asset class.
“The decision to start publishing daily volumes forms part of our wider market and trade data strategy. LMAX Digital is already providing real-time market data to some of the industry’s leading reference rate indices and is working with further major institutional analytics providers to integrate our real time volume data feed into these platforms,” said David Mercer, CEO of LMAX Exchange Group.
