Crypto trading has gone mainstream in the world of FX. What started as a niche add-on is now a fully integrated part of the traditional brokerage setup, with familiar platforms like MetaTrader and cTrader leading the charge. If you’ve ever placed a forex trade on the popular MT terminal, odds are you’ve also seen a crypto pair or two popping up alongside your usual EUR/USD and GBP/JPY. And yep, 24/7 trading on MT is a real thing now.
To dig into how all of this is coming together, we’ve been chatting with industry leaders who are building the future of trading tech.
In our earlier coverage, we heard from Lars Holst, CEO of GCEX; Konstantin Shulga, CEO and co-founder of Finery Markets; and Steve Sanders, EVP of Marketing and Product Development at Interactive Brokers. You can check them out here.
Last week, we continued with insights from Mark Foulger, Managing Director – Digital Asset Innovation at Rostro Group; Justin D. Hertzberg, Chief Executive Officer at FPFX Tech and Michael Thirer, Chief Legal Officer at Muinmos. If you missed them, you can catch up here!
Today, we round it off with views from Tom Higgins, Chief Executive Officer at Gold-i, Spotware and Quoc Dat Tong, a Senior Financial Markets Strategist at Exness.
Behind the scenes, liquidity hubs like oneZero and PrimeXM play a crucial role. These systems allow brokers to tap into fragmented crypto markets without needing to develop infrastructure in-house. These hubs help brokers aggregate prices from multiple sources and distribute them with minimal latency. For example, a trader on Pepperstone’s MT5 platform might receive pricing data sourced from several liquidity providers.
White-label solutions like DXtrade Crypto allow even those late to the game to adopt a ready-made platform, highlighting that core tech providers now consider crypto a standard component of multi-asset trading.
A key area of competition has become connectivity and API support. Brokers increasingly promote their FIX and REST APIs as “crypto-ready,” catering to algorithmic and quant traders who require seamless integration for custom strategies. Similarly, there has been a strong push toward integrating with popular user interfaces such as TradingView and mobile apps. Saxo Bank’s early move to add crypto FX pairs to TradingView in 2021 set the tone for this trend.
Overall, brokers have largely succeeded in making crypto trading feel native within their platforms.
Brokers like IG, CMC Markets, and Saxo Bank adapted their proprietary platforms to support cryptocurrencies, treating digital assets as a new asset class. IG’s trading system, once limited to weekday operations, now runs continuously through weekends to enable crypto trading. CMC Markets integrated crypto into its NextGen platform, offering features like sentiment analysis and technical tools alongside traditional forex instruments. Saxo Bank, meanwhile, added Crypto FX pairs to its multi-asset suite, allowing clients to trade pairs like BTC/USD without needing a crypto wallet—though initially limited to weekday hours.
Other brokers relying on third-party platforms such as MetaTrader 4/5 (MT4/MT5) and cTrader have also jumped on board. These platforms, while inherently flexible, needed backend modifications to enable 24/7 crypto CFD trading. Firms like IC Markets and Exness now offer round-the-clock crypto access on MT4/MT5, while brokers using cTrader benefit from its built-in cryptocurrency support and the specialized cXchange platform for launching white-label exchanges.
Enabling crypto trading isn’t just about front-end features—it requires stable connectivity to the crypto market’s deep liquidity. Middleware solutions from providers like oneZero, PrimeXM, and Gold-i emerged as essential, offering bridges that link brokers’ platforms to major crypto exchanges or over-the-counter (OTC) liquidity providers. These bridges manage key crypto-specific functions like decimal precision, price feed continuity, and overnight funding calculations.
For example, oneZero’s integration of Wintermute as a liquidity provider allows brokers to route crypto trades, while PrimeXM’s XCore connects directly to exchanges such as Binance and Kraken, ensuring consistent market access.
While many brokers continue to operate fiat-only accounts, some ventured into crypto-native territory. eToro, for example, offers a dedicated crypto wallet allowing clients to transfer holdings from their trading account, as well as receive crypto from or send crypto to external wallets.Eligible eToro Club members can also transfer cryptoassets held with other exchanges, brokers, or in other blockchain wallets to their eToro Crypto Wallet, where they can convert their holdings to cash, in order to trade and invest across multiple asset classes on eToro’s investment platform. Similarly, Swissquote Bank built a regulated, bank-grade custody solution.
However, most brokers—including OANDA and Interactive Brokers (IB)—outsource crypto custody. IB partners with Paxos to hold client crypto in their own names, while OANDA facilitates crypto trades without directly handling coins, instead converting client deposits to USD before routing through Paxos.
Some offshore brokers, such as FXOpen and certain Exness entities, allow crypto deposits and withdrawals via Bitcoin and stablecoins, requiring blockchain monitoring tools and AML-compliant wallet infrastructure.
To meet the needs of retail and institutional crypto traders, brokers expanded into third-party ecosystems like TradingView. Saxo Bank and OANDA now offer TradingView integration, allowing direct order placement via their APIs. This move provides access to a vast user base of crypto-focused traders already familiar with the charting platform.
Additionally, APIs for algorithmic trading have been extended to support crypto. Interactive Brokers offers crypto access alongside stocks and FX via its API, while OANDA updated its REST and FIX APIs for crypto CFD trading outside the U.S.
MetaTrader users adapted MQL scripts for crypto, with brokers ensuring servers remain online over weekends. cTrader, too, supports automated crypto trading strategies through its Open API and cAlgo.
Behind the scenes, brokers also upgraded risk management, accounting, and reporting systems. Platforms now calculate funding fees and mark-to-market positions every day—including weekends. Brokers offering actual crypto trading, like IB, have had to incorporate tax lot accounting and real-time reconciliation with custodians.
The choice between developing in-house systems and buying off-the-shelf solutions varies by broker size and strategy. Firms like Plus500 built proprietary platforms for crypto CFD integration. Meanwhile, others opt for white-label offerings such as DXtrade Crypto by Devexperts or plugin tools from B2Broker and Tools for Brokers.
These turnkey platforms include full mobile/web interfaces, price feeds, and even crypto wallet and custodian integration—allowing smaller brokers to rapidly enter the crypto trading space without building complex infrastructure.
As part of the transition, platforms now include crypto-centric features like 24-hour percentage change indicators, client positioning metrics, and integrated news feeds from major crypto sources.
cTrader supports any symbols, including crypto, that a broker’s liquidity provider delivers. Assets are not limited by type.
From a technology standpoint, a Spotware representative told FinanceFeeds that their offering fully supports FIX protocol, a standard in professional trading environments. “We do support the FIX protocol, and it is available for institutional crypto trading alongside other integration options.”
“Our API is Protobuf-based and designed for high performance, offering low latency and strong scalability, which makes it well-suited for algo-trading strategies,” the rep confirmed.
In terms of institutional connectivity, Spotware When it comes to more complex products, such as crypto derivatives or structured instruments, Spotware is open to customization. “Custom-built crypto derivatives or structured products can be supported via the FIX protocol. Depending on the complexity of the product, this may require some additional development on our side.”
“cTrader supports any symbols (including crypto) a broker’s liquidity provider delivers. We don’t limit assets by type.”
As for synthetic instruments, the company follows a FIX-based workflow where liquidity providers take the lead. “Liquidity Providers (LPs) must send these to us via FIX, generating them on their end,” the spokesperson noted. With around 40 existing FIX adapters, Spotware can onboard new LPs if needed: “If no suitable adapter exists among our current ~40 FIX adapters, our backend team can develop one, provided they receive the LP’s FIX Implementation Handbook (FIH).”
According to Quoc Dat Tong, Senior Financial Markets Strategist at Exness, the introduction of Bitcoin in 2009 was a fundamental turning point for the world of finance. “2009 marked a paradigm shift. For sure,” he reflects. “Not only did people start perceiving money and personal finance differently thanks to Bitcoin, but they also started seeing investing and trading through a different lens.”
As the crypto market matured, its role in modern trading ecosystems became increasingly apparent. “Now that we all finally agree that crypto is here to stay, its entrance to the trading world was only a natural step forward,” Tong adds. He points out that cryptocurrencies bring more than just innovation—they offer valuable portfolio diversification: “Cryptocurrencies offer great diversification, not to mention all the excitement that comes with growth assets.”
Interestingly, Tong draws parallels between the behavior of cryptocurrencies and the tech sector: “The behavior of cryptocurrencies is very similar to that of tech stocks. In fact, all of them have a certain correlation with tech-heavy NASDAQ, particularly altcoins.”
According to Tom Higgins, CEO of Gold-i, the crypto liquidity landscape today mirrors “FX liquidity 15 years ago”—an evolving market with plenty of opportunity but considerable complexity.
“MatrixNET has evolved significantly to become a market-leading platform for financial institutions wishing to access the crypto markets,” Higgins told FinanceFeeds. It now connects with over 35 crypto Liquidity Providers (LPs), including market makers, exchanges, ECNs, and traditional LPs. Notably, the platform is also “fully integrated with the major crypto clearers for clients trading through ECNs.”
Unlike the standardized FIX protocol used in FX markets, crypto remains fragmented across FIX, WebSocket, and REST. “We have evolved to be able to cope with all three protocols, which we support on both the taker side and the maker side,” Higgins notes.
MatrixNET’s smart order routing (SOR) capabilities are central to its offering. “Smart order routing is core to our product,” says Higgins. The system can “adjust the spreads before we do our smart order routing aggregation to account for fees,” ensuring clients are not misled by seemingly favorable prices that become less competitive once fees are factored in.
Among its key features is an advanced retry mechanism: “If a liquidity provider is rejecting orders but is still pricing, we try other venues.” Clients can configure how often to retry before the LP is temporarily—or permanently—removed. Higgins highlights another recent innovation: “We’ve recently launched our Sin Bin feature which monitors the quality of the Liquidity Provider… If they’re still misbehaving, we’ll take them out of the book permanently until they’re manually put back in by the client.”
Institutional-grade execution is ensured by combining deep order book aggregation, real-time compression, and adaptive smart logic. “In FX, you can often have enough liquidity with a single source. However, in crypto you definitely need to aggregate a number of sources to get the depth of book you want.”
“We’ve tested our platform to 50,000 price updates per second,” explains Higgins. “If there is very high volatility… the system will automatically start throttling so that the downstream platforms can cope.” This dynamic throttling ensures speed without sacrificing quality.
Gold-i’s liquidity network has grown organically, powered by industry relationships. “Liquidity Providers typically come to us to ask to be connected into MatrixNET,” Higgins says, and the team regularly adds new venues as client demand evolves.
Market maturity has also brought pricing improvements. “As demand has increased, spreads have tightened a lot and fees have come down dramatically,” he explains, though he notes that fees remain “higher than FX but much lower than they were a few years ago.”
Gold-i also offers synthetic liquidity solutions, enabling clients to trade less liquid assets more effectively. “We can generate any synthetic instrument that clients want to have, based on two other assets.”
To combat liquidity fragmentation across centralized exchanges and various blockchains, Higgins says, “We can aggregate across multiple exchanges to provide a much larger liquidity set,” especially useful for minor coins that lack deep liquidity on any single venue.
Slippage mitigation is another area of focus. “Our technology can dynamically compress from all sources in the order book,” says Higgins, ensuring trades are executed at realistic and timely prices. With sub-millisecond latency, Gold-i’s infrastructure supports near-instant execution, though Higgins points out that some latency, such as cross-continent delays, is “a speed of light issue” and not entirely avoidable.
With crypto’s inherent volatility, risk management tools must be both agile and comprehensive. “Gold-i’s Visual Edge risk management tool has been developed to manage market exposure risk across all asset classes, whilst also monitoring for toxic clients,” says Higgins. This solution is increasingly popular among crypto brokers looking to protect against downside risks.
A standout feature of Visual Edge is its volatility-aware automation: “Clients can have an algorithm looking at the volatility index. When the volatility index is high, they can automatically close out their positions to reduce their risk.”
Compliance is another area where Gold-i takes a future-forward approach. “From the outset, we developed our platform as if cryptos are fully regulated instruments because at some point they will be.” Higgins emphasizes the importance of audit trails and disaster recovery, noting, “Everything is recorded in our databases and logs are available to show best execution… everything is replicated in real-time to a secondary system.”
Though FIX protocol remains the industry standard, especially among institutions, Gold-i’s flexibility stands out. “The institutional market operates almost entirely on FIX which is our core protocol,” Higgins notes. “But we’ve added parallel support for REST and WebSocket for takers or makers.” This multi-protocol support allows participants to “take or make using the protocol of their choice,” he concluded.
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Crypto Trading Finds A Place In Traditional FX/CFD Brokerage World (Part 3) – FinanceFeeds
