High-frequency traders dominate Bitcoin trading

Sina US Stocks News Beijing time on the 17th, Bloomberg said that Zhou Shuoji (sound) is not a fan of Bitcoin . He said that this cryptocurrency will never replace traditional currencies, and he believes that most Bitcoin supporters are blindly fanatical.

But Bitcoin also has an irresistible appeal from the perspective of his profession: a high-frequency trader. His computers trade Bitcoins 24 hours a day, seven days a week. With lightning-fast instructions, they profit from tiny price differences between the myriad platforms where Bitcoin is traded.

Forget the libertarians, the speculative individual investors and the Chinese savers who want to quietly move their money overseas. The reality is that professionals equipped with advanced technology dominate Bitcoin trading, accounting for as much as 80%, and they use this market to emulate trading strategies honed by some of Wall Street's biggest names. For these professionals, Bitcoin is just the latest asset class ripe for machine trading.

The cryptocurrency’s market structure ticks all the boxes: arbitrage opportunities across multiple exchanges, zero transaction costs on Chinese platforms that handle most of the world’s trades, 24-hour trading, and colocation services that allow market participants to place their servers near exchanges’ servers. With bitcoin trading volumes soaring to record highs this month, high-frequency traders have no shortage of opportunities to make money, according to data tracked by Bitcoinity.org.