Nasdaq’s X-stream trading technology system is finding a new use: Powering a forthcoming New York-based digital currency marketplace aimed at Wall Street traders.
Noble Markets, whose founder headed up development of electronic trading platforms at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and UBS, will use X-stream to provide institutional market participants, liquidity providers, and other cryptocurrency and bitcoin exchanges with a low latency, highly transparent cryptocurrency marketplace, the companies said on Tuesday (March 24).
“Noble was founded on the principal of bringing credible market structure and institutional trading expertise to the cryptocurrency marketplace,” Noble founder and CEO John Betts said. “All customers demand a fair and orderly market, the best possible pricing and confidence trades will be completed efficiently. We are excited that Nasdaq shares our vision and commitment to support the development of this ground-breaking market. Our Marketplace, powered by X-stream, allows us to leverage a proven and trusted venue that supports global trading worth billions of dollars reliably, every day.”
The forthcoming Noble exchange, which is aimed at Wall Street traders, represents a new test for bitcoin, which despite a terrible year as an investment in 2014 has appeared to gain credibility as it lost monetary value.
The Noble Markets launch also will come in the wake of a pair of high profile, if more conventional, digital currency exchanges. In late January, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss announced that they were planning to roll out the first regulated U.S. bitcoin exchange. Officially named Gemini but nicknamed “the Nasdaq of Bitcoin” by the brothers, it was slated to open “in the coming months.”
But Gemini was beaten to the punch by Coinbase, which less than a week later launched an exchange for U.S. bitcoin users that it said was approved by regulators in 24 jurisdictions, including California and New York. Coinbase’s investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Japanese telecom giant NTT DoCoMo, and the Nasdaq’s downtown rival, the New York Stock Exchange.
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