Bitso exchange, geared towards Latin America, has bought Quedex, a trading platform for crypto derivatives based and regulated in Gibraltar.
Bitso, backed by Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, and others, was in the news last December after raising a whopping $ 62 million to expand the business into new territories and, of course, explore new products.
The commercial terms of the Quedex acquisition were not made public, but Bitso CEO Daniel Vogel told CoinDesk that this fits well for several reasons.
Quedex was the first crypto derivatives platform to be licensed through Gibraltar’s digital asset regulatory system, which has the same jurisdiction and regime as Bitso, Vogel said. The acquisition of Quedex also allows Bitso to get its hands on some cutting-edge technology, he added.
“As the industry grows and the trading volume increases, one of the big challenges is to develop really powerful, low-latency trading engines, and the Quedex team has done that,” Vogel said in an interview. “So the idea is to replace all of our trading infrastructure with Quedex’s trading infrastructure.”
In addition to asking to move to areas like Brazil, customers of Mexico City-based Bitso have also asked for more sophisticated products like leveraged trading, crypto futures and options, Vogel said.
“So far we have only offered spot trading,” said Vogel. “What we are seeing is that there has been so much financial literacy that has happened through crypto. A few years ago customers asked what the difference was between a limit order and a market order. Today they are asking to trade futures and options on Bitso. “
Vogel said a team of 22 people, including many Quedex engineers, will oversee the integration of the new trading engine technology. At the last count, Bitso had around 200 employees in 25 countries.
“That rose to 230 from this morning,” said Vogel.
