Trading Teams at Crypto Exchange Raise Conflict Questions

Crypto.com, the exchange endorsed by Hollywood actor Matt Damon, deploys internal teams to trade tokens for profit, the latest sign of potential conflicts of interest in the digital assets industry. Financial Times: The Singapore-based group, one of the top-10 crypto marketplaces in the world, operates proprietary trading and market making teams, according to five people with direct knowledge of the matter. In most markets, exchanges match buyers with sellers at the most competitive transparent price. Market making and prop trading are usually conducted by separate private companies. US regulators have begun clamping down on similar activities at other digital asset exchanges. This month the US Securities and Exchange Commission hit Binance, the world's biggest crypto exchange, with 13 charges including using a trading firm owned by chief executive Changpeng Zhao to engage in "manipulative trading that artificially inflated the platform's trading volume." "These trading platforms, they call themselves exchanges, are commingling a number of functions," SEC chair Gary Gensler told CNBC on June 6, adding: "In traditional finance, we don't see the New York Stock Exchange also operating a hedge fund, making markets." The existence of internal traders at Crypto.com has not been widely known since the company launched in 2016. One of the people with direct knowledge about the teams said that Crypto.com executives gave other, external trading houses "absolutely dramatic sworn statements that Crypto.com was in no way involved in trading," while another said that employees were asked to "say there is no internal market maker type operation."

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