Marcus Richards
CrypPro provides liquidity to the Web3 ecosystem. By leveraging our proprietary technology, we offer an extensive suite of liquidity solutions to Web3 participants (Market Making, DeFi liquidity, Execution Services, Coin Listing, etc…).
We partner with selected exchanges (CEX and DEX) to increase liquidity, improve market efficiency and help them scale.
We also offer our market making capabilities to new or established cryptocurrency projects to improve their liquidity. CrypPro currently offer 24/7/365 liquidity on 20+ exchanges, 60+ digital assets and 200+ crypto pairs. We are solution driven & client centric.
Tell us about yourself?
I am a senior finance executive with 20+ years of banking experience, last 7 years as Managing Director at Credit Suisse.
I ran a variety of trading businesses and built innovative award winning platforms offering access to new markets or trading instruments.
I am solution driven, expert in risk management & passionate about technology.
I got into crypto trading very naturally when I realised that this field combines everything I like: trading, risk management, product innovation, client solutions, etc.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
I would ask myself to read again the book: “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, plan for the future, make sure you know VERY specifically what is your edge & what is the experience you are missing & find if in the talent you hire.
What problem does your business solve?
Market makers create efficient markets by facilitating liquidity on execution venues (crypto exchanges, OTC desks, brokers etc…).
Liquidity refers to the ease with which an asset can be bought or sold without affecting price stability. Crypto markets run 24/7, meaning that consistent liquidity is constantly required to fulfil orders at all time.
Healthy order books enhance investors’ confidence and trust in cryptocurrency markets. Therefore, the role of crypto market makers is indispensable in a nascent and fragmented crypto market.
CrypPro primarily offers its market making service to crypto exchanges and crypto projects:
For crypto exchanges, CrypPro improves liquidity on the venue by quoting bid and ask orders, by tightening bid-ask spreads and by increasing order book depth.
As a market maker, CrypPro also mitigates price volatility and reduces slippage which allow large institutional investors to execute big market orders on the exchange without triggering high volatility and high costs.
CrypPro also helps projects solve their usual challenges: lack of liquidity, low trading volume, price manipulation, low interest in the token project and difficulty in listing on major exchanges.
CrypPro has built connectivity to 60+ crypto exchanges and offers its market making capabilities to cryptocurrency projects looking to improve their liquidity on all venues where the token is listed.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
Web3 is transforming the internet through providing trustless exchange of assets, data and true ownership. Innovative applications and experimentations are all being built over public blockchains however suffer from one common problem, liquidity.
We are confident that Web3 will grow massively in the years to come & will facilitate peer to peer transfer of assets, all subject to one thing: assets price observability!
That’s why we’re here. We are solving the liquidity problem, providing price obersvability on exchanges, bootstrapping decentralised applications and providing other institutional services such as liquidation.
What is your magic sauce?
We have built a liquidity platform with the highest standards of technological and trading sophistication allowing us to provide liquidity to the Web3 ecosystem.
Our best-in-class technology allows us to be extremely fast and run our high frequency trading strategies.
With more than 600 algorithms currently running 24/7 on different exchanges and new algorithms being deployed every week, we built an architecture that is flexible and can scale. Last but not least, it only takes a couple of days to integrate with a new exchange.
With 12 employees working full time, we’re a relatively small shop which allows us to be nimble and to offer bespoke strategies to our clients. Most of our competitors will use standard strategies for all of their clients.
At CrypPro, we like to understand our clients’ needs and we always fine-tune our trading algorithms accordingly, to make sure our strategies fit the client’s goals. We believe in long-term relationships and we always ensure our clients are satisfied with our market making services.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
Our goal is to become the biggest Web3 market maker. And we are well positioned for this challenge! Currently focused on exchanges and projects, we expand to diversify our liquidity solutions and offer our services to more Web3 participants (such as OTC desks, brokers, institutional investors etc…).
We are also looking to expand our product coverage to more sophisticated products such as options and structured products as we believe this is where the market is going.
For longer term, we aim at building a platform that like-minded individuals want to join in order to build their own businesses, to grow their own innovative ideas, surrounded by the talent & ressources they needed to excel in a fast growing and constantly changing universe.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
I think the biggest challenge is talent. Coming from the banking industry, I was used to running different businesses and to having sticks and carrots to drive teams to their success.
In a startup, the business is very demanding and constantly evolving & we don’t operate with sticks or carrots but with everyone’s desire to succeed. Finding the right talent with the right commitment and the right risk appetite is difficult.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
People join us because they like our project, our goals & our teams.
They also and as importantly buy into our culture: we know that while no-one is perfect, a team can be perfect!
We like to have complementary skills in our teams, hide someone’s weakness with another one’s strength. We are building teams of business owners & innovators, and this is very attractive to right talent!
