Crypto King Bart Smith Talks About Benefits of Regulatory Clarity on Cryptocurrencies

In the world of cryptocurrencies, their applications and their banning, there always lies a certain problem that perpetually remains unsolved. Cryptocurrency regulations is one of them. Many people believe that cryptocurrency regulations would turn out to be advantageous than banning would.

Thinking on the same line is , Bart Smith, the “Crypto King” of Wall St., who is hopeful that once there is regulatory clarity around the crypto ecosystem, institutional investors will start pouring money.

Bart Smith is the head of investment firm Susquehanna International Group. The company, which is based out of Bala Cynwyd, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia, is one of the highest-volume trading firms, and it has long dealt in stocks, options, ETFs, and other conventional securities.

Since then, the privately-held company has launched a crypto trading desk manned by a dozen traders who buy and sell millions of dollars in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies every day. Smith told CNBC,

“We have a dedicated team of traders and technologists. We’ve been trading bitcoin primarily, but in 2017 as the marketplace expanded, we expanded the number of coins we were trading and the number of exchanges we were providing liquidity on.”

“We are trading on average a couple hundred million dollars a day [on bitcoin futures] across CME and CFE combined that’s not retail.”

Smith says cryptocurrency evangelists shouldn’t focus so much on whether or not there should be regulation, but more so on the importance of regulatory clarity.

Expanding on this point he said,

“There’s a big debate going on about whether there should be more or less [crypto] regulation. From our standpoint, it’s really about regulatory clarity. There has been a tremendous amount of focus on the SEC and Chairman Clayton’s comments. But it’s really a whole host of other regulatory agencies out there, because the ecosystem expands beyond the traditional financial assets.”

Smith said that Susquehanna is bullish on bitcoin ETFs, exchange-traded funds (ETF’s) that provide retail investors with exposure to bitcoin’s price movements without custodial risk, because he believes they are an ideal vehicle for investing in virtual currencies.

When asked if there’s a correlation between the stock markets and the crypto space, Smith said he doesn’t think so. He says that what drives bitcoin prices differs from what moves the equity markets because crypto is not an institutionally-driven marketplace like the S&P 500.

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