Trading Show Chicago: 2015–2018

Terrapinn’s Trading Show Chicago is one of the preeminent financial services conferences of the year and I have attended and reviewed the event for the past five years. This article is a compilation of my postings from 2015–2018 while a recap for Trading Show 2019 can be found here.

The articles for 2015–2017 originally appeared on the Maven Wave Partners blog while the 2018 edition was published in the John Lothian Newsletter.

2015:

The Trading Show Chicago, along with FIA Expo, has evolved into the tent-pole event for discussion and exhibition on important industry trends and developments for the Chicago community. This year’s edition was held at Navy Pier on June 3 and 4 and here is a recap of the key takeaways from the event and a synopsis of the comments and conversations from some of the most interesting panels.

Key Takeaways

We’re all busy these days and we often don’t have time to go into any depth. For those who like to skim and those that have been trained to lose interest in reading something just past the 100 word mark, here is a brief look at the key takeaways from The Trading Show.

• The debate over cloud adoption in the financial services industry is history. While some panelists argued the merits of cloud, the simple truth is that nearly all firms have already embraced cloud and the trend is still growing.
• With cloud, the argument over security is a false one. In fact, security is probably one of the last things that one should worry about when it comes to public cloud usage.
• Data analytics, on the other hand, is still in the early stages of adoption. There is quite a bit of activity in this area and I think we can expect to see a whole lot more in the future.
• Existing exchanges are viewed as part of the problem, not part of the solution, with market data fees being a primary source of complaint. Of course, the major exchanges neither sponsor nor have a big presence at the event (with the exception of BATS and Eurex), so it may simply be easy to pick on them. Still, the griping is evidence that negative pressures continue in the trading world and finger pointing still exists.
• Lest you get the wrong impression, issues related to trading was also a part of the Trading Show. A separate track of panels tackled such issues as “Evaluating Trading Methods”, “Stress Testing” and “Sentiment Analysis”. However, technology has come to dominate the discussion and a look at the exhibit hall confirmed that: the largest number of vendors were peddling wares for IT infrastructure and connectivity. Trading is definitely a tech world.

Keynotes and Panels

The Trading Show has a sprawling, two day agenda of keynotes, panels, and round-tables so it’s not possible to succinctly cover all of the topics presented and, quite frankly, it wouldn’t be that interesting or insightful to get a fire hose recitation of everything that went on. Here then are a few notes of some of the key events:

Market Structure During Exceptional Liquidity Events, Lee Maschler, Trillium Trading

Simply put, the equity markets are still subject to a large number of mini-flash crash events. In fact, there are an average of 35 moves of approximately 3% each and every day. While some of these are warranted by economic fundamentals, many have no known root and are, therefore, cause for concern.

According to Maschler, the Limit Up Limit Down (LULD) guidelines that have been implemented since the May 2010 Flash Crash have improved the situation while, on the other hand, Clearly Erroneous (CE) policies at exchanges and the use of Stop Loss orders by customers are two destabilizing influences. In the case of CE, an element of uncertainty is injected into the markets at a time of stress because market makers are less likely to trade if a transaction might later be busted, in some cases up to 30 minutes later, if it is determined to be CE. Similarly, the use of Stop Loss orders can be destabilizing because they can introduce unchecked selling pressure when a market is already vulnerable. Maschler believes that both CE and Stop Loss orders “should be retired”.

Market Data: Maximizing, Modernizing, and Mobilizing

Key items discussed in this panel were the uses of cloud for market data and discussion of the roots and effects of rising data costs. With respect to cloud, it is not a one-size-fits-all panacea for data but rather a means to both lower overall cost when used in a blended manner and a medium for creating new market data solutions, such as data for rent or getting access to previously hard to reach emerging markets products. No one had a good word to say for the exchanges, with Antonio Conclaves for Devexperts going as far as to say that they exchanges are “shooting themselves in the foot” with high fees.” In his opinion, fees that are low will help markets grow and that exchanges will make more money in the long run if fees are reduced.

Keynote: Is a New World Order for Exchanges Emerging? Jos Schmitt, Aequitas Innovations

For those that are unfamiliar, Aequitas is a consortium of buyside and sellside firms that have banded together to launch an equity exchange in Canada to compete with TMX. With their NEO exchange they join the likes of iex, Luminex, and Plato that are attempting to address the issues of falling customer confidence, diminution of liquidity, particularly in lesser-traded listings, rising prices, and thinning of dealer ranks by offering alternative platforms.

In the case of NEO, the methods deployed are a variable speed bump for behavior that is deemed to be latency sensitive, HFT-type activity, lower fees, and simplified order types. NEO was launched at the end of March with the stated goal of gaining market share of 20% over four to five years and little has been published on their results to date. Rival TMX has responded with changes in order types, some altering of pricing structure, and an alternative exchange of their own. The competitive wheels are turning. (Update from Wikipedia: By April 2018, NEO accounted for close to 10% of all Canadian equity trading (over 6%, excluding block trades), close to 20% of all Canadian ETF trading (over 10%, excluding block trades), and over 60 NEO-listed ETFs and closed-end fund symbols from 9 different issuers.)

Schmitt gave a plain-spoken talk and explicitly stated that people should stop trying to blame HFT and regulators for problems and that markets are definitely not rigged (take that, Michael Lewis!). Schmitt believes, however, that exchanges are the root cause of problems and he doubts that they can respond in ways that will be for the good of the market overall. He had words of caution for regulators, telling them to avoid micro-regulation that would have unintended consequences. Instead, he asked that they strive to increase transparency and to make changes, such as trading around the open and close,that will enable more competition.

At the end of the day, it remains to be seen how successful any of these efforts will really be. While the issues that raise their concern are real, it is not apparent that the root causes are so simply addressed. In any case, the markets will vote with their business and history suggests that incumbents are extremely hard to displace simply by having the best of intentions in mind.

Next Generation Infrastructure — Cloud solutions, acceleration technologies and data storage platforms

A more apt title for the panel would have been “Cloud, Cloud, and More Cloud.” The panel reflected how broadly and deeply the concept and practice of cloud computing has permeated the industry. Comments included:

• Asif Alam of Thomson said that 60% of customers are in the cloud in some form and that the greatest impediment to cloud adoption is not security, as some believe, but rather resistance from entrenched culture and practice. In a word: people.
• Corrie Elston of Google said that only those functions that require low latency should not be on cloud, meaning that over 90% of business function should be cloud-based.
• Nigel Young of Spot Trading seemed to concur and said that they have two app stacks, one fast and one slow. Spot captures all of U.S. equity market data with the cloud. The one loss with cloud is visibility and direct control of hardware, but that can be mitigated.

Predictive Analytics and Capital Markets — Does more data trump smarter algorithms?

The seemingly apparent answer is “no” but there are wrinkles to the question. Paul Rowady of TABB Group led an entertaining and informative look in to a panel that were, at the end of the day, big fans of analytics. Among the insights:

• Peter Nabicht of 12Sided Technology said that the task is to make big data small. It is easy to be overwhelmed by “big data” so the key becomes asking the question first on what might or not be meaningful and then find the data to prove or disprove the premise.
• Andrew Paul Acosta of Milesius Capital Research sounded a cautionary note on that approach and suggested that it is important to always be on the look out for bias introduced by not being open minded.
• Brian Peterson of DV Trading echoed the same and said that it pays to always be skeptical of trading and data models. Always.
• On the question on the state of data analytics, all agreed that it is early days for the opportunities that are available. Nabicht said this was evident because the siloed nature of work keeps making him a “slave to another dashboard”; integration of solutions will signal more maturity. Nabicht went on to say that data beyond trading, such as systems data, still needs to be integrated.

Evolving Security Threats in a Changing Datascape

Perhaps the most telling indicator of the relevance of this topic was that one of the panelists was unable to attend due to a security event at his place of employment. At the end of the day, the surprise from the panel was the support and virtual endorsement of the public cloud.

James O’Shea of RBC was the most outspoken of the panelists. Following the comment that “security puts the ‘no’ in innovation”, O’Shea went on to endorse the cloud because of the specificity that can be achieved in configuration over legacy networks. He cited the example of a lunch menu that is slapped up on a server that has complete access to a firms network in a legacy system but is an isolated instance in a cloud configuration. Rajesh David of GE Capital agreed, saying that security should be among the least of your concerns in the public cloud and Mike Beller of Tradeworx noted that not one of the major breaches to date has occurred in the public cloud. In fact, Tradeworx built the MIDAS system for the SEC in the public cloud (AWS, to be specific).

Cashing in on the Cloud

If endorsements of the cloud from security and data panels weren’t enough, The Trading Show offered a panel that addressed the cloud directly. The fact that an exchange (Deutsche Borse), SIFI (GE Capital), and investment manager (World Quant,) are all users and proponents of cloud services is a testament to the ubiquity of cloud in financial markets.

There were a number of interesting insights offered on the current and future states for the cloud:

• Adam Honore of MarketsTech LLC stated that the real value of cloud lies in variable pricing and the ecosystem collaboration that leads to the creation of new products and value propositions.
• Tim Hundt of GE Capital said that their adoption has been driven by push rather than pull: they are forcing teams on to private clouds. A benefit of this has been that the migration reveals poorly designed systems that can then be rearchitected.
• Stephen Watling revealed a similar tactic that he called “starve the beast”: managers that want new products are not given budget and have to find ways to creatively get things done.
• Among key take aways, David Rushkin of WorldQuant said that re-architecturing to the cloud has to be particularly mindful of cloud ins-and-outs, such as SLA terms. Watling talked about how cost savings are less likely to come upfront and are more a part of the endgame so it’s important to take the long view.

Keynote: The Role of Principal Traders in Today’s Markets, Rob Creamer, Geneva Trading

Creamer is the CEO of Geneva Trading, a ~150 person principal trading firm that is headquartered in Chicago, and he is also the Chairman of the FIA Principal Traders Group (PTG). As such, he is the standard bearer for this important constituency against the bias and mistruths that have been so prevalent over the past few years over what is crudely labeled “HFT”.

Creamer made a solid case for the importance of principal traders and he enumerated three key takeaways: attention must be paid to the troubling decrease in the number of clearing firms, steps should be taken to address the fragmentation and unnecessary complexity in equity markets, and access, competition, and liquidity in SEF and FX markets should be improved.

At the end of the day, Creamer’s arguments were clear, concise and credible but they probably don’t go far enough. Unfortunately, he is limited by the diverse constituency of the PTG and further by the nonpartisan nature of the FIA itself. In private, I suspect that Creamer would be somewhat less temperate in expressing his opinions. Perhaps what’s needed is an unaffiliated firebrand to speak some truth!

2016: What’s Trading Got To Do With It? Notes from Trading Show Chicago

During an afternoon networking break at last week’s Trading Show Chicago event, I bumped into the COO of a clearing firm that I know. Beyond exchanging pleasantries, he stated that “I don’t know what I’m doing here”. With topics ranging from open source collaboration to the dollar value of a microsecond, the trading world that he once knew was gone. If Trading Show Chicago taught us anything, it’s that this is not your father’s trading world anymore.

Getting to the (Open) Source

The Trading Show Chicago, hosted by Terrapinn, was held over two days at Chicago’s Navy Pier and the first keynote signaled a different approach to trading than what would have been seen just a few short years ago. It has been a truism that financial services has been all take and no give when it comes to open source standards and technology, but Dirk Eddelbuettel from Ketchum Trading illustrated how that is changing. The fact of the matter is that trading firms have largely broken free of their knee-jerk paranoia about all of their tech and now recognize that they only need to protect those activities that generate alpha and not an activity that is a commoditized function. In the case of Ketchum, the 80/20 rule applies with 80% in commoditized functions like scripting, domain language, and storage and 20% devoted to edge strategies analysis and in-house trading technologies.

Lest you think that Ketchum is an outlier, Brian Peterson of DV Trading, Peter Nabicht from 12 Sided Technolgy, and Michael Beal of Data Capital Management all referenced open source sharing practices in their discussions and Eddelbuettel commented on Two Sigma’s contributions to open source as well. In another case, I spoke to a rep from one of the largest prop trading firms in the world and he told me that they have been very generous with financial support for open source groups, although their contributions remain anonymous. I suspect that taking funds from a prop trading firm might rub some people in the open source community the wrong way.

Panels and Presentations in a Nutshell

Over the next day and a half, the panels and presentations boiled down to one simple fact: it’s all about the tech, ‘bout the tech, ‘bout the tech, in trading (apologies to Meghan Trainor). Here’s a brief recap on some of the highlights:

• Brian Peterson, DV Trading — in addition to his comments on open source, Peterson examined the disconnect between academic and industry in high performance computing. Take-away: the scrappy, real-world of trading can teach a thing or two to academia about improvisational flexibility in technology.
• Next Generation Infrastructure: this panel spent too much time on the hoary topic of “build v. buy” (hint: it’s “buy”, per open source comments above) with the biggest reveal being how pervasive cloud has become, particularly when it comes to analysis and testing. Another myth dispelled: trading loves the cloud.
• Stephane Tyc, McKay Brothers and Mike Persico, Anova Technologies: In separate presentations, these connectivity providers illustrated that the race to zero is still being run. Tyc described the specifics of connections between the CME in Aurora and NYSE in Mahwah (they’re within 32 microseconds of the speed of light), how they were able to reduce the time between Basildon and Frankfurt by a few microseconds by drilling through a wall (although the telco doesn’t know about it yet), and how large U.S. prop firms are hoping to build “Eiffel Towers” on the coast of England to get the shortest path possible between London and Frankfurt. Persico, for his part, went over the methodology that is the basis for an upcoming white paper that estimates the total value of the latency alpha between NYSE, BATS, and Nasdaq is $758 billion and that the value of a microsecond is something on the order of $7.72.
• Matthew Dixon of IIT / Quiota and Michael Beal of Data Capital Management: While the need for speed is still acute, the dive into data, particularly when teamed with AI, is progressing as well. Dixon described how deep neural networks are already making an impact in areas like speech recognition and self-driving cars as well as in financial markets. Meanwhile Beal described how his firm is akin to “Google and JP Morgan giving birth to a hedge fund”, one that is driven by traditional and nontraditional data and tools.
• Tech, tech tech: Programming with R (Jeffrey Ryan, Citadel), cognitive computing (Josh Cohen, IBM Watson), NVMe accelerated caching (Brad Winett, DataDirect Networks): need I say more?

More to Trading than Just Technology?

To be fair, the whole conference was not focused on technology. The first day had a “Quant World & Big Data” track that touched on more traditional topics like dynamic portfolio management (Attilio Meucci, KKR), the impact of rising interest rates on low-risk investment portfolios (David Jessup, UBS) and the relationship between index and individual stock volatilities (Brian Liang, Bloomberg). However, the discussion came back time and time again to technology. For better or worse, that’s the way the trading world revolves these days.

And last but not least, no financial conference these days can go without a discussion of blockchain and The Trading Show was no exception. In this case, however, I was the moderator of the panel so I don’t have notes on the comments made. For that, efinancialcareers filed a story: you can read it here.

2017:

As spring turns to summer, there is a flurry of activity as industry trade shows take advantage of the nice weather before calendars become cluttered with vacation time and business winds down to the languid pace of the warm weather months. In Chicago, Terrapinn’s “The Trading Show” and FOW’s “Trading Chicago” took very different approaches to a similar topic and both offered some very interesting insights into the state of trading, technology, regulation, and financial markets in general.

Terrapinn at the Pier

The Trading Show from Terrapinn has grown in recent years to be a tent-pole event for the Chicago financial community. Both attendance and the number of vendors were higher this year over 2016 and topics such as data, risk, and blockchain were front and center in discussions.

As noted in comments from last years Trading Show, the main topic at the Trading Show isn’t so much trading as it is technology and the makeup of the vendors at the show reflected this reality. There were 54 vendors at the event with 20% offering connectivity, 20% in the hardware business (e.g. overclocked CPUs, NICs, and GPUs), 16% dealing strictly with FPGAs, and a further 14% offering advanced data solutions. Technology rules.

Industry leaders in connectivity, Anova Technologies and McKay Brothers, have both delivered keynotes at the show in recent years and the change in substance this year from last was illuminating. Last year’s presentations were an indication that the “race to zero” was still on, with Anova calculating the value of a microsecond and McKay describing how they were mere micros from the speed of light. In comparison, the 2017 comments were markedly different. In the case of McKay, the discussion centered on where the next speed races will be as the trading network expands beyond existing centers and the answer, in a nutshell, is that satellite connectivity is likely to win against fiber. Anova described how they have transformed from a low-latency provider to an IP/patent house with an emphasis on internal engineering, R&D, and custom innovation. In short, the race to zero is both over and continues at the same time: diminishing returns have set in for the highly traveled routes but innovation continues apace for the rest of the world.

Other interesting topics of discussion included:

• Bob Litterman of Kepos Capital gave an interesting talk on pricing carbon that included his assertion that Exxonmobil is an especially bad actor in the debate, the Saudis are selling a stake in Aramco because they see the top in oil, and the market is responding to change with innovations such as a World Wildlife Fund stranded assets total returns swap that is long the S&P 500 and short coal, tar sands, etc.
• Brian Peterson from DV Trading emphatically declared that they are out of the sub-mic speed game and instead focus on making better predictions, figuring out how to make fewer bad trades, and be proactive rather than reactive in hedging. He also said that much of the discussion around machine learning in “pixie dust” and overlooks the simple truth that it’s more important to figure out where your processes are bound than to simply apply a new and exciting technology.
• Machine learning and AI were hot topics with, for instance, Howard Getson of Capitalogix Trading describing how they use adaptive AI to better identify what is working for them and AJ DeRosa from Orbital Insight described how they are using geospatial APIs to their advantage, particularly in emerging and frontier markets.
• Technologies that got multiple mentions included NVMe over Fabrics, TensorFlow, Intel Skylake, GPUs in general, and Python.

FOW Returns to Chicago

It’s been over a decade since FOW produced an industry trade show in Chicago and they teamed with John Lothian News to bring Trading Chicago to town in the last week of June. Talk of regulation dominated the day but a lively format that included TED-like talks and an Oxford style debate kept things interesting.

The day began with a full-throated assault on Dodd Frank from University of Houston professor Craig Pirrong and continued with an Oxford-style debate between Gary DeWaal of Katten Muchin and Leslie Sutphen from Financial Markets Consulting on repealing both Title VII and the Volcker Rule from Dodd Frank. Using an app, audience members were given the chance to vote on the question prior to the debate and 58.3% supported the “yes” proposition that argued for repeal.

DeWaal went first and came out swinging against both Title VII, which covers regulation of the swaps market, and the Volcker Rule, which constricts the ability of banks to trade. He argued that Title VII is fundamentally flawed in its cookie cutter approach to making nearly all swaps clearable and this has led to an unwelcome concentration of risk as 6 firms hold 90% of all cleared swaps risk. Sutphen, in reply, was equally as strong in her defense of the elements of Dodd Frank, saying that a lack of supervision and transparency were key factors in the 2008 meltdown and the whole system is more safe due to these provisions of the act.

Following questions posed by the audience, rebuttals, and closing arguments, the audience was polled once again and this time only 37.1% favored repeal. At the end of the day, it seemed clear that the audience bought the argument that Dodd Frank had indeed made markets safer and, just as importantly, it’s not practical to expect that Congress will be able to manage the will and cohesion to make repeal a realistic outcome.

The TED-talk style presentations came from Chris Anderson of Itiviti on the ETF markets and Brian Peterson from DV Trading on machine learning in trading markets. Of the two, Peterson’s presentation was the most compelling as it provided a solid primer on the basics of machine learning along with real-world examples of how the principles are being applied in trading as well as the pitfalls that need to be avoided.

The day ended as it began, with a look at regulation. This time the topic was MiFID II, the European regulatory regime that is hanging over the markets like a dark cloud. Stacie Hartman from Schiff Hardin moderated as Jennifer Tveitman-Rifman of Gelber Group, Vedder Price’s Juan Arciniegas, and Thom Thompson from TGT Consulting scared the heck out of everyone in the audience as they described the tidal wave of bad ideas that is scheduled to hit the marketplace come January 2018. Simply put, if you expect to actively trade in European markets and haven’t yet taken steps to address the impending changes then you are out of luck: no European trading for you next year!

Miscellaneous comments and presentations of note included:

• A panel on the U.S. options market that was led by Chip Dempsey from The OCC and included Euan Sinclair of Talton Markets, Paul Jiganti from IMC, Dash Financial Technologies’ Peter Maragos, and Steve Crutchfield from CTC. The discussion provided some interesting insights, but was lacking diversity as no exchanges or regulators were there to defend such topics as venue proliferation that is funded by an options regulatory fee (on the part of exchanges) and collateral rules that are nonsensical (brought to you by, who else, regulators).
• The Customizable Technology panel, led by Robert Kallay from Andrie Trading and featuring Rob D’Arco of Rival Systems, Jesper Alfredsson from Itiviti, Fidessa’s Chris Monnery, and Stuart Farr of Deltix, provided countless examples of how the debate is clearly over and “build vs. buy” has evolved to “build & buy”.
• And finally, Gary DeWaal, in an aside during his Dodd Frank rebuttal, brought up the little mentioned possibility that Republicans may well pick up additional seats in the Senate in the 2018 election. That has nothing to do with trading but it certainly is food for thought!

At the End of the Day

Both the Trading Show and Trading Chicago highlighted that trading is alive and well in Chicago but change continues to come from all angles. For example, the speed race to zero is likely all but over but the race for speed in other areas continues apace. Further, the impact of the continued ascendancy of the cloud is being felt in many areas, including emerging areas like machine learning and blockchain, in a way that surely indicates that more change is on the horizon. Stay tuned to see how it all works out.

2018:

Terrapinn’s Trading Show has established itself as a sure sign of spring in Chicago, and while the past few years have found the event swinging heavily to a focus on the technology side of trading, including chips, servers, databases and connectivity, the 2018 edition of the show had a strong leaning towards…you guessed it: cryptocurrencies. Everywhere you go in financial markets in 2018, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are sure to be there.

The exhibitors at the conference still skewed to the hard technology side (let’s face it, all of trading is touched by technology at this point) but the open seminars and VIP panel discussions were weighted heavily towards crypto, with 11 of 19 seminars focusing on blockchain, etc. and a separate track just for crypto panels and presentations. Also, the title sponsor for the Trading Show was Kraken, the large crypto exchange, and their team was everywhere on the trade show floor, leading roundtable discussions, appearing on panels, and even throwing an overcrowded (read: successful) party after the last day of the show.

There is no doubt that crypto has grown and matured in many ways over the past year, but the market ecosystem still bears many of the hallmarks of a wild west gold rush. Two cases in point: a wet-behind-the-ears cryptocurrency hedge fund manager wannabe actually began his panel appearance by declaring, “I am a genius,” and a representative from a large cryptocurrency exchange told the audience at his panel that their business was “very, very, very, very, very profitable” (I actually lost track of how many times he said “very”), which came off as a cross between boastful and ignorant. Any 49er would tell you that the surest way to lose your claim is to jump up and down clicking your heels and screaming “GOLD! I’m rich!” when your pan fills with nuggets. Best to accumulate your fortune quietly.

That being said, the crypto market has come very far very fast and there were a large number of “grown ups” who shed interesting light on where these markets are now and, perhaps more importantly, where they might be headed. For example:

• Derivatives industry titans Bo Collins and Chris Hehmeyer kicked things off with an example of how old dogs actually can learn new tricks. Both have interesting crypto enterprises in development, and they had some interesting thoughts and observations to share. For example, Collins discussed how major wholesale exchanges will likely be centralized, and Hehmeyer talked about how hard it is to predict the evolution of something as unusual as smart contracts. Hehmeyer also said that this “genie (cryptocurrencies) is not going back in the bottle.”
• Jim Radecki of Cumberland Mining, the crypto arm of DRW, laid out five factors that need to be addressed for the much discussed institutional “wall of money” to enter the crypto markets: consolidated liquidity, standardized settlement procedures with the availability of services like repo, custody and security, valuation on research and metrics, and regulatory clarity. It’s hard to conceive of a scenario where Cumberland won’t benefit as the crypto markets evolve.
• Kraken COO Dave Ripley noted the irony that cryptocurrencies are viewed as risky from a security standpoint, but they routinely find security issues as they interact with financial market incumbents (more on Kraken below).
• All the panelists asked for greater regularity clarity, not necessarily more regulation. Michael Moro, CEO at crypto market makers and service providers Genesis Capital, verbalized what most everyone believes: in the U.S., the CFTC is the most natural regulator for these markets.
• Garrett See of DV Chain, the crypto trading arm of DV Trading, echoed the thoughts of many when he complimented the introduction of bitcoin futures but lamented the lack of physical delivery for the existing products offered by Cboe and CME Group.

Finally, in a week that saw the New York Times report that Intercontinental Exchange, parent to the NYSE, was close to launching a cryptocurrency exchange, it was interesting to sit in on a roundtable discussion led by Craig Stoe from Kraken. Kraken had issues coping with hyper-growth last year, as did many other crypto exchanges, and Stoe began his comments acknowledging that fact. However, he went on to describe how the company is doing hard work identifying the needs of its key client personas (they use 6) as he listened to the thoughts and experiences of a diverse crowd that included 20-something crypto fund managers as well as grizzled industry veterans. It begs the question: how will the upstarts do against the behemoths? We should know a lot more by the time of Trading Show 2019.