Crypto penetration within the financial services industry appears to be gathering pace after Thomson Reuters (TR) – the second largest player in the field of market data – announced yesterday its own plans to platform crypto data in the form of real-time price feeds for the world’s leading cryptocurrencies.
The news comes three months after Bloomberg’s own announcement of plans to platform ICO data on its terminal sourced from crypto project research house Piccolo Research.
“We continue to see increasing demand from our customers for pricing coverage of major [crypto] names,” explained Sam Chadwick, Director of Strategy at TR.
Crypto Edging Towards Mainstream
The development means that the world’s two leading market data platforms will now be platforming crypto data, and will likely be seen as yet another sign of the crypto phenomenon’s breaking through into the mainstream.
On the other hand, investment professionals – a majority of the end users of Bloomberg and TR terminals – continue to be reluctant about entry into the crypto investment space – largely because of the high volatility in crypto pricing and the lack of regulatory frameworks in place for crypto-based investments.
At the same time, whilst cryptocurrencies are currently thought to have a combined market value of just over $300 billion, this figure still represents a tiny fraction of the estimated $200 trillion valuation attributed to traditional investment assets. “It is unlikely that the market data industry itself will attribute much weight to this development at this stage,” states Ali Yazbek, cryptocurrency market analyst.
