Cryptocurrency trade Crypto.com is constructing an inside market-making staff as a part of its growth into prediction markets, a transfer the corporate says is absolutely aligned with federal laws and meant to enhance liquidity, whilst market-making in outcome-based buying and selling continues to attract scrutiny.
Bloomberg reported Tuesday that the trade is recruiting for a brand new function on its market-making desk, citing a job posting for a “quant dealer” who would assist purchase and promote contracts tied to the outcomes of sporting occasions on Crypto.com’s prediction platform.
The report has drawn consideration to the apply of exchanges facilitating buying and selling in opposition to buyer orders, a construction that may elevate questions on conflicts of curiosity as prediction markets gain traction throughout each crypto and conventional finance.
In an announcement to Cointelegraph, a Crypto.com spokesperson stated the corporate’s inside buying and selling staff is absolutely disclosed to the US Commodity Futures Buying and selling Fee and makes markets throughout its North American derivatives enterprise.
“The underside line for patrons is [that] extra competitors and liquidity on the platform creates a greater total expertise,” the spokesperson stated, including that inside and exterior market makers function underneath the identical guidelines to make sure market equity and integrity.
“No market maker at Crypto.com will get a ‘first look’, and our inside market maker doesn’t have entry to proprietary knowledge or buyer order circulate earlier than different market makers or market individuals,” the spokesperson stated.
They added that Crypto.com doesn’t depend on proprietary buying and selling as a income supply. “We’ve a easy enterprise mannequin offering our retail clients entry to digital property for a payment, whereas staying threat impartial,” they stated.
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Market-making isn’t distinctive to Crypto.com
Crypto.com shouldn’t be the one prediction-market operator to depend on market makers to assist liquidity.
The Bloomberg report famous that opponents akin to Kalshi and Polymarket additionally use skilled buying and selling firms or devoted liquidity suppliers to facilitate buying and selling on their platforms.
Kalshi, which operates a federally regulated event-contract trade, depends on designated market makers reasonably than a purely peer-to-peer order guide, and people preparations have largely been public. It has been reported that quantitative buying and selling firm Susquehanna Worldwide Group has supplied market-making providers to Kalshi since 2024, serving to provide liquidity as buying and selling volumes surged.
Polymarket, a decentralized prediction market that drew widespread consideration through the US presidential election for precisely predicting the end result, can also be constructing an inside market-making unit, in response to Bloomberg.
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