Talos Can Be a Success

Talos as a provider of institutional digital asset trading technology which also offers a huge variety of services is extremely successful among investors.

When cryptocurrency first appeared, the traditional financial world largely ignored it. We expected these institutions would eventually want to participate in the crypto economy, and that there would be a need for a company to help bridge the gap between traditional finance and the crypto ecosystem.

Creating a robust infrastructure that could connect dozens of sources of liquidity and ultimately support trillions of dollars in trading volume is necessary. Talos is one of these companies.

What is known about Talos? It is a crypto trading platform founded in 2018. The platform provides services such as price monitoring, access to the crypto market, reporting and clearing for institutional clients. The founders of the project are Anton Katz and Ethan Feldman.

In May Talos, the provider of institutional digital asset trading technology, announced a $105 million Series B funding round that values the company at $1.25 billion. The leader of the round was global growth equity firm, General Atlantic, with participation from experienced investors in both the traditional finance and digital asset spaces. New investors including Stripes, BNY Mellon, Citi, Wells Fargo Strategic Capital, DRW Venture Capital, SCB 10x, Matrix Capital Management, Fin VC and Voyager Digital, Graticule Asset Management Asia (GAMA), and LeadBlock Partners joined the round.

Existing investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, PayPal Ventures, Castle Island Ventures, Fidelity Investments, Illuminate Financial, Initialized Capital, and Notation Capital also extended their partnerships with Talos through this newest funding round.

The financing comes on the heels of the firm’s rapid growth, as a result of which the volume of institutional trades increased more than 20 times compared to the previous year.

Its growing network of services — trading platform, lending market, data, and analytics, as well as portfolio and settlement tools, offered directly or through white-label (this is a concept involving the production of non-branded products or services by one company and the use of such products or services by another company under its brand) service providers — allow customers of all types to make end-to-end transactions without worrying about unnecessary intermediary risk or potential conflict of interest.

“We believe the growth in digital assets is driving existing players and new entrants to seek out institutional-grade solutions. Talos provides enterprise-grade order management, liquidity aggregation, algorithmic execution, reporting, and compliance to market participants, which should allow for more efficient operations, better execution and lower total cost of ownership,” said Aaron Goldman, Managing Director and Co-Head of Financial Services at General Atlantic. “Crypto market structure is still evolving, and Talos’ vision to build a comprehensive toolkit for market participants across CeFi (centralized finance) and DeFi (decentralized finance) positions the company as a competitive disruptor.”

💡 Interestingly, Anton Katz, co-founder and CEO of Talos, learned to code without a computer. His grandfather gave him a book on programming when he was 10. With no computer, he began writing code on paper.

The success of this company should be envied. During the past year, the team has grown by more than 400% and offers opportunities in New York, London, Sweden and Singapore, as well as fully remote roles. There is nothing to find fault with, but we will continue to observe such a rapidly developing company.