{"id":291192,"date":"2018-12-17T16:27:13","date_gmt":"2018-12-17T14:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=291192"},"modified":"2018-12-17T16:27:13","modified_gmt":"2018-12-17T14:27:13","slug":"former-goldman-electronic-trading-boss-sees-parallels-in-crypto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/291192\/former-goldman-electronic-trading-boss-sees-parallels-in-crypto\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Goldman electronic trading boss sees parallels in crypto"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Greg Tusar, the former global head of electronic trading at Goldman Sachs Group Inc, is excited about digital assets despite the horrific year for cryptocurrencies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels like being at the early days of trading equities electronically,\u201d said Tusar, who serves as chief technology officer and is a co-founder of Tagomi Holdings.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s early stage, there\u2019s a lot of opportunity to build great businesses and have impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tagomi, which bills itself as the first live electronic brokerage offering prime services, has begun executing client trades.<\/p>\n

Tusar is working alongside co-founders Jennifer Campbell, who is serving as chief executive officer, and Marc Bhargava, the company\u2019s president.<\/p>\n

The platform combines liquidity across different exchanges and offers more trade reporting and transparency to customers such as hedge funds and high net-worth individuals, the trio said in an interview.<\/p>\n

Crypto investors are currently saddled with many difficulties, including concerns over custody, struggles engaging with large exchanges and executing large orders, among other things, said Tusar, adding that there isn\u2019t anyone who can help clients implement these strategies from beginning to end.<\/p>\n

Investors who want to place orders of $10 million for Bitcoin, for example, might be limited if no exchange is able to handle the order.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe current environment is challenging, for sure, but we think there\u2019s a lot of longer-term demand for digital assets and helping clients understand the transformative impact of crypto and blockchain,” he said.<\/p>\n

Tusar spent 13 years at Goldman, leaving in 2013 after serving as global head of electronic trading.<\/p>\n

He spent years representing Goldman at industry conferences and commenting publicly about regulatory proposals involving equity market structure and was named partner in 2008.<\/p>\n

More recently, he\u2019s worked as head of client market making and execution at New York-based KCG Holdings Inc. and spent time as chief executive officer of Greywolf Consulting, according to his LinkedIn profile.<\/p>\n

The launch of trading by Tagomi Holdings comes amid a meltdown in the cryptocurrency universe that has seen the largest tokens shed billions in market value after surging in 2017.<\/p>\n

Bitcoin, which traded near $20,000 just a year ago, has dropped more than 75% to around $3,200 Monday. And some analysts are predicting it is likely to continue its downward trend and could fall as low as $1,500.<\/p>\n

Cryptocurrencies have come under pressure from US regulators who have increasingly cracked down on the space, with the Securities and Exchange Commission refusing to back a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund amid lingering price manipulation and surveillance concerns.<\/p>\n

The agency also fined two companies that hadn\u2019t registered their initial coin offerings as securities.<\/p>\n

But as prices have dropped, volatility has fallen and the company\u2019s suite of tools becomes more important, said Campbell.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn periods of lower volatility, tools like those Tagomi provides, which reduce transaction costs, will become far more important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tagomi\u2019s investors generally have a long-term view when it comes to digital assets and cryptocurrencies, said Tusar.<\/p>\n

Backers include Peter Thiel\u2019s venture-capital firm, Founders Fund, along with the Collaborative Fund, SV Angel, Brainchild and Digital Currency Group.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe began building in March and began testing our platform a number of months ago,\u201d Tusar said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re launching now because we finished building the platform and want to go out and engage clients. The people we\u2019re engaging so far are still interested and engaged because they see what this technology can do over the long-term.”<\/p>\n

Digital assets are in their early innings, Tusar said. “In taking the long view, I really believe that this is a transformative technology, that we\u2019re still in the early stages.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Read: Bitcoin sinks nearer to $3,000<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Greg Tusar, the former global head of electronic trading at Goldman Sachs Group Inc, is excited about digital assets despite the horrific year for cryptocurrencies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":289834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961],"tags":[5537,1999,26],"class_list":["post-291192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-bitcoin","tag-goldman-sachs","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":291196,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291192\/revisions\/291196"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}