- Market makers are essential to cryptocurrency exchanges.
- New ventures are rarer than other crypto venture launches, Infima Capital CEO says.
Former Nexo employees have left to start a new market-making firm called Infima Capital, according to a pitch deck reviewed by DL News.
Tom Stanev, formerly Nexo’s head of trading, will lead the new operation.
A spokesperson for Nexo, which is also a lender and cryptocurrency exchange, confirmed DL News that Stanev and a group of former collaborators had left.
Also joining Stanev are Stefan Bonev, former Nexo engineering director, and Lora Zlateva, former Nexo product manager. Infima Capital already has more than 40 employees, according to the release.
New opportunities
Market makers, also known as liquidity providers or fast trading firms, typically generate returns by using algorithms to profit from price discrepancies of assets traded across multiple platforms.
A mainstay of stock markets, market makers help facilitate cryptocurrency trading by taking the other side of a trade when users buy or sell tokens on an exchange.
Although necessary for the day-to-day operation of exchanges, new market makers do not appear as often as, say, a new blockchain or NFT collection.
“It’s rarer,” said Stanev, CEO of Infima Capital. DL News.
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Stanev’s planned launch of his market-making firm comes as fast-trading giants Jump Crypto and Jane Street are exiting the sector.
And the company says the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s recent approval of Spot Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange-traded funds helped.
“The ETF’s approval and resolution of some of the largest legislative actions in recent years have brought a new set of opportunities to the market,” the filing reads.
A partner
Infima secured a $5 million investment from an unnamed partner, according to the deck.
Stanev declined to reveal who his company’s financial backers were.
“We have commitments from several counterparties, which I will keep confidential for now, given that we are still in the fundraising phase and nothing is set in stone,” he said.
The partner will provide a $100 million credit line to Infima Capital for market creation and “market neutral strategies,” according to the document.
The partner will also route a portion of its trading volume to the new market maker.
Stanev said DL News that Infima Capital was a “passion project” during his time at Nexo.
His new company plans to trade on more than 10 exchanges after launch and provide liquidity, or initial funding, to DeFi protocols.
Ben Weiss is a Dubai correspondent for DL News. Got a tip? Email him at bweiss@dlnews.com.
