Thomson Reuters Survey Finds Increasing Interest in Cryptocurrency Trading

Cryptocurrency trading by financial firms could increase in 2018, according to a new Thomson Reuters survey, with approximately 20 percent indicating they are considering trading cryptocurrency over the next 3–12 months. The survey was conducted among more than 400 clients across all of Thomson Reuters trading solutions, including Eikon and REDI, as well as its FX platforms.

“Cryptocurrency is still a relatively small part of the trading market, but this survey makes clear this niche segment is starting to enter the mainstream of the financial services industry. This is a major change from a year ago,” said Neill Penney, co-head of Trading at Thomson Reuters, in a statement. “The most important thing for our clients is seamless access to news and data around cryptocurrencies to facilitate informed trading decisions.”

News and information provider Thomson Reuters, whose shares are listed on the Toronto and New York Stock Exchanges, has operated in more than 100 countries for more than 100 years. Thomson Reuters financial information products and services cover both traditional and emerging asset classes like crypto assets. It currently provides prices for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies via its flagship financial desktop platform Eikon, as well as MVIS indices and CME bitcoin futures.

The company also recently launched a new version of its MarketPsych Indices (TRMI v3.0), which includes the first sentiment data feed for Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency news and social media sites are scanned and scored in real-time, aiming to capture market-moving sentiments.

“While bitcoin and its crypto asset cousins have mainly become a phenomena among individual retail investors, the rollout shows one of the ways that digital tokens are gradually entering the world of institutional investing,” noted Quartz.

Thomson Reuters intends to introduce further capabilities in this sector throughout 2018.

Among the participants in the survey who indicated they would trade cryptocurrencies in 2018, approximately 70 percent said they were planning to do so over the next 3–6 months with an additional 22 percent planning to trade over the next 6–12 months. The survey also found generally widespread familiarity with cryptocurrencies.

“Over the last three years, Thomson Reuters has been focused on exploring the application of smart contracts through the provision of market data with BlockOne IQ,” Sam Chadwick, director of strategy in innovation and blockchain at Thomson Reuters, said in conversation with Bitcoin Magazine. BlockOne IQ is an Oracle framework for private distributed ledgers operating on Corda or Ethereum that allows application developers to use signed content from Thomson Reuters within smart contracts.

“Throughout 2017 though, it’s been clear that beyond the potential use cases of smart contracts, industry participants are increasingly seeing the potential of crypto assets as a new asset class as it provides financial institutions with operational effectiveness and is starting to become an asset that their institutional clients are increasingly interested in holding as part of a diversified portfolio,” Chadwick told Bitcoin Magazine.