CMT Digital does a lot of community building work throughout the cryptocurrency industry, including the Chicago DeFi Alliance, which provides support and mentorship to startups in the DeFi space across trading, markets and regulation.

(24:45) Brad Koeppen, Head of Trading at CMT Digital, explained what motivated the firm to get involved, saying that they are looking to bridge the gap between DeFi and traditional trading as many traditional firms in Chicago take the leap into crypto but are trading on centralized exchanges.

(25:16) “We believe in DeFi. We believe that there could be a really big opportunity here to create something very valuable for a lot of users on a global basis. Obviously like anything in crypto it’s still in its infancy, but if the right things are built, and the right people are participating, we think this could be a big opportunity. So it’s really about allowing us to learn more on the trading side, on the venture side, allowing these DeFi protocols to get to know us and other trading firms and broadening the knowledge base there, letting everyone learn from the other side — letting DeFi learn from traditional trading firms and the trading firms learn about DeFi.”

Some of the traditional firms that are involved include E&Y and TDAmeritrade.

Koeppen had a bird’s eye view into both the traditional markets and the cryptocurrency markets during the severe market volatility during the March stress test, and he says crypto weathered the storm pretty well. (27:07)