Alameda Research is a quantitative cryptocurrency trading firm and liquidity provider. The firm manages over $100 million in digital assets, and trades between $600 million and $1.5 billion per day in thousands major coins, altcoins, and their derivatives.
Background
Founded in 2017, Alameda Research is a financial services company that focuses on providing liquidity, and managing digital assets. The company was originally founded in Hong Kong, but has expanded its reach to the United States and Japan, and has developed the ability to operate on every market, and every exchange.
Alameda Research was founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, who had previously worked at Jane Street, a global proprietary trading firm that is most notably known for its liquidity providers. He relocated Hong Kong to start the company. The team consists of five other employees, who have prior experience in engineering and trading on traditional markets.
Services
Market Making
Alameda Research is one of the ‘few full-service cryptocurrency trading firms.’ They offer low-latency trading and global presence in many market. Their quantitative strategies include mean reversion and machine learning, among other strategies to maximize available techniques. The company also provides liquidity in all major coins, derivatives, and altcoins on the top 35 exchanges. Lastly, the company offers a market-neutral mandate, meaning their strategies grant them the ability to thrive in bull and bear market trends, ‘particularly when volumes and volatility are high.’
OTC Trading
Alameda Research offers a large liquidity pool and low execution costs, given its ability to trade around $1 billion in digital assets on a daily basis. Their strategies include arbitrage, which
Their trading system offers:
- Tight spreads
- Instant quotes
- Zero fees
- Fast settlement
- No minimum trade size
- Fast onboarding process
DeFi
Alameda research has progressively become more invested in the DeFi world. Around early September of 2020, it was announced that the firm claimed 14,654, or nearly 70% of minted Wrapped Bitcoin the month prior. This move was made after they lobbied for an increase in collateral placed to earn interest on the Compound protocol from 0% to 40%, and the lobbying worked, as the increase was appoved shortly after.