Galaxy Capital Leads $16 Million Funding for Crypto Project Caspian

Institutional traders simply need better crypto tools.

That's the driving idea behind a union between Kenetic, a crypto firm based in Hong Kong, and Tora, a trading systems firm that already supplies order execution, portfolio management, risk assessment and compliance services for well-established asset classes.

Announced today, both companies are teaming up to create Caspian, a project that has raised $16 million in funding via a token presale.

Wills called Caspian "a frictionless on-ramp for crypto traders."

Continuing, Wills said Caspian was built out of a need - one he saw firsthand when he transitioned from running a trading desk at the hedge fund Och-Ziff to Kenetic.

"Liquidity is fragmented across dozens of exchanges globally, each with their own quirky API connections. Professional trading software will facilitate greater liquidity in crypto assets," he told CoinDesk in an email.

Wills knew these products already existed in traditional finance but they just needed to be repurposed for crypto.

Still, the team at Caspian has been encouraged by the size of the client pipeline they could have.

There will be one billion caspian tokens, which were created with the ethereum token standard ERC-20.

In a slide deck, the company contends it's already plugged in to 25 crypto exchanges, and offering a useable product to institutional clients.