Skew raises $ 5 million and launches a trading platform

London-based Skew, a real-time data analytics provider for crypto derivatives, launched a trading platform and raised $ 5 million to build its new brokerage services.

The SkewTrading program to attract institutional investors

Announced Wednesday April 29, skewTrading is a UK-based partnership with Kyte Broking focused on attracting institutional investors entering the cryptocurrency space.

The $ 5 million in funding, led by London-based Octopus Ventures, adds to a $ 2 million seed round raised in September last year. Before co-founding Skew in September 2018, Emmanuel Goh and Tim Noat worked as stock traders for U.S. banks JPMorgan and Citigroup.

To begin with, skewTrading will focus on the over-the-counter (OTC) execution of block operations CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) for bitcoin futures and bitcoin options on futures contracts.

Goh says that the time has not yet come for institutions to invest heavily in cryptocurrencies. "We decided to cover the future product and CME options first because we believe this is the place where these institutions will first feel comfortable."

Goh added. A good example of this was the recent news that the New York hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies, is considering adding bitcoin CME futures to the instruments it trades.

Most interest comes from crypto-native asset managers, hedge funds and OTC desks, Goh said, but once in a while a traditional wealth manager, hedge fund or large bank will sign up for derivative analysis. by Skew.

The partnership with Kyte means that Skew becomes the former's "designated representative" with the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Goh said that Kyte's National Futures Association (NFA) membership helps access US customers.

Team building

Skew, which currently has nine employees, plans to double its staff size over the next half year with a focus on building its engineering power (Ian Brennan, previously head of technology at the digital agency Fathom, which counted Tradeweb and MarketAxess as customers, recently joined Skew as product manager).

Goh said that although there has been a lot of attention on areas like custody and settlement in the crypto space, the brokerage aspect hasn't been dealt with much, and that's where Skew is taking an agile fintech approach. "There is an element of action here in trying to separate the different aspects," he said. "Some cryptographic companies want to do everything while here we want to focus only on the things we are good at."

And what do you use to exchange your crypto currencies? Have you already taken a look at automatic trading platforms like Bitcoin Pro? Let us know in the comments below what you think!