just now
June 22, 2020 - CrossTower, a new trading platform founded by capital markets veterans on a mission to mainstream digital asset investing and trading, today announced the completion of a $6 million seed funding round led by Gerard Lopez, founder and CEO of several prominent start-up ventures and tech security companies, an early investor in Skype and one of the top technology investors in Europe.
“It’s exciting to be launching a digital-asset platform with a team that has incredible passion for the asset class and a deep understanding of the requirements needed to succeed in the digital asset industry,” said Lopez. “I look forward to taking this journey with CrossTower and helping them bring digital assets to the masses.”
CrossTower’s official May launch was well-timed with this year’s historic institutional inflows into crypto markets. The exchange currently supports highly active order books and tight spreads for crypto-to-crypto trading in the nine most widely traded currencies: Bitcoin, Ether, LiteCoin, USDC, Bitcoin Cash, XRP, Stellar, Chainlink, Basic Attention Token and ZCash. CrossTower plans to introduce additional assets and services later this year.
CrossTower Co-founder and CEO, Kapil Rathi, has spent his career building and running trading venues from the ground up while in senior leadership roles at the Cboe (Chicago Board Options Exchange), Bats Global Markets (acquired by Cboe), ISE (International Securities Exchange) and NYSE (New York Stock Exchange). Prior to CrossTower, Rathi was the Chief Operating Officer (COO) at exchange software provider, AlphaPoint.
“We have seen great initial success since our launch in May and look forward to continued growth as we mainstream the digital asset investing and trading process,” said Rathi. “This is a critical time for the crypto industry, and this funding will accelerate our ability to serve this exciting and emerging market segment.”
With deep expertise in the regulatory landscape related to decentralized finance, CrossTower Co-founder and President, Kristin Boggiano, has built innovative products in the capital markets industry for over 20 years. She was instrumental in the development of numerous derivatives and other structured products at Merrill Lynch and Schulte Roth, was a Managing Director on the quant desk at Guggenheim, and worked with Rathi as Chief Legal Officer (CLO) at AlphaPoint.
“We are fortunate for Gerard’s commitment to help us grow and innovate within the digital asset industry,” said Boggiano.
CrossTower brings five distinct qualities to the digital asset markets:
An Institutional Experience - senior team members have spent their careers building and running traditional trading platforms and thus institutions will find their experience with CrossTower to be very familiar;
Overall Low Cost of Trading – a competitive and innovative pricing model along with technology to help customers achieve best execution by minimizing implicit and opportunity costs;
Liquidity Out of the Gate - partnerships with leading market makers and high-throughput APIs to connect to other institutional and retail trading platforms;
Regulatory Safeguards - rigorous security and regulatory safeguards, including KYC/AML screening, and oversight by a globally recognized third-party auditor; and
Robust Technology- low latency matching engine supports a wide range of innovative order types and co-location services help users achieve lightning-fast trading speed.
CrossTower Investor, Gerard Lopez, is Chairman & CEO of Nekton Global, former Chairman of Genii Capital, Founding Partner of Mangrove Capital and former Board Member of WIX and Skype. No further details of CrossTower’s seed funding round were disclosed.
