On Thursday (September 10), Bitstamp, Europe’s largest cryptoasset exchange by trade volume, announced that it had received a major speed upgrade.
Bitstamp got acquired on 29 October 2018 by Belgium-based investment firm NXMH.
According to a report by Reuters, Bitstamp was founded in August 2011 by Nejc Kodrič and Damijan Merlak (who “sold his entire 30 percent stake in Bitstamp with the deal and has not been active since 2015”).
Bitstamp CEO Kodrič said in a letter to customers on 29 October 2018 that Bitstamp had “started in a garage with two laptops and EUR 1000 seven years ago.”
Then, on 5 November 2018, Bitstamp announced that it had partnered with Cinnober, a leading provider of trading and clearing technology, in order to replace its in-house developed matching engine with Cinnober’s “TRADExpress Trading System”, and said that the customized software would be hosted and operated by Bitstamp.
David Osojnik, Bitstamp’s CTO said back then:
“While Bitstamp’s matching engine was already very good by crypto standards, this will put us in the same league as traditional exchanges with decades of experience. Our platform’s order matching speed is expected to become 1250x faster, while throughput will increase by 400x.”
Well, now, Bitstamp says that it has an even faster matching engine.
In a blog post published yesterday (September 10), Bitstamp said:
“We’ve finished implementing a state-of-the-art matching engine from Nasdaq. This major tech upgrade allows us to greatly improve the performance of our exchange and provides the foundation for a number of new features…
“Our new matching engine, created by Nasdaq, allows us to match orders up to 1250 times faster and increases our platform’s maximum throughput by up to 400 times.
“The level of performance Nasdaq’s engine gives Bitstamp, including the capability for sub-millisecond order execution, has so far been reserved for traditional financial markets.
“Now, our most demanding customers will be able to trade cryptocurrencies with the same level of efficient performance they’ve come to expect from the world’s leading traditional exchanges.
“We’ve already carried out the first in a line of performance upgrades powered by the new engine and prepared an in-depth report on the results in cooperation with Kaiko.
“Apart from the performance boost, the new matching engine allows us to build and release new order types and trading pairs much more efficiently. It is the necessary piece of infrastructure that will allow us to bring crypto trading on par with established traditional markets both in terms of performance and features.
“We’ve already used the new engine’s capabilities to double the number of trading pairs we support when we listed GBP as a new base pair in May and added XLM and PAX in June.”
In yesterday’s press release by Bitstamp Limited, Andy Green, Vice President and Head of EMEA, Nasdaq Market Technology, had this to say:
“By upgrading their technology with a scalable and robust solution from Nasdaq, Bitstamp can continue to bolster their capacity, performance and resiliency.
“We look forward to supporting Bitstamp in their growth and technology journey.”
As for the Bitstamp CTO, he stated:
“The new matching engine from Nasdaq doesn’t just bolster Bitstamp’s performance, it gives us a great foundation from which to build new features
“Bitstamp is once again leading the charge in the technological evolution of crypto trading, with the goal of making our industry more accommodating to sophisticated players used to the performance of traditional financial markets.”
The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.
