Here's how one of NYSE's largest market makers is breaking into DeFi

Episode 67 of Season 3 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Ari Rubenstein, Co-Founder and Ryan Sheftel, Co-Founder & CEO at Radkl.

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On this episode of The Scoop, founder Ari Rubenstein and founder & CEO Ryan Sheftel joined host Frank Chaparro to discuss the launch of their new crypto firm, called Radkl.

Radkl, which was born out of trading firm and New York Stock Exchange market maker GTS, is a new digital asset trading business. GTS currently trades hundreds of thousands of financial instruments algorithmically, which according to GTS accounts for some “five percent of the entire US equity markets by volume.”

Radkl’s focus on crypto today means providing liquidity and eventually getting into decentralized finance protocols like staking, among other services it expects to offer for its clients. 

“Being involved in the liquidity provision, in the AMM protocols, and DeFi is an obvious first start” Said Sheftel. The CEO said that he expects traditional CeFi order books to merge with AMM liquidity, and to have Radkl serve that sector of the market.

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Meanwhile, Rubenstein sees the beginnings of crypto firms as a similar kind of disruption and growth potential for traditional businesses to when capital markets went electronic and online.

Rubenstein believes they are early entrants into a growing market, “I think we're going to see a world very soon, Frank, that we see an explosion in a secondary market for things that formerly didn't have secondary markets that now are made by this digitization of of industries that- I don't mean just financial instruments or digital pictures like entities- I mean lots of other things that could ride the backbone of CeFi and decentralized finance.”

Hedge fund investor and owner of the Mets Steve Cohen also announced he will be backing Radkl. Though as of yet, the exact sum of that investment has not been disclosed.


© 2023 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

About Author

Frank Chaparro is Host of The Scoop podcast and Director of Special Projects. He also writes a biweekly newsletter. Chaparro started his career at Business Insider, where he specialized in the intersection of digital assets and Wall Street, market structure, and financial technology. Soon after joining Business Insider out of Fordham University, Chaparro was interviewing top finance and tech executives, including billionaire Mark Cuban, “Flash Boys” star Brad Katsuyama, Cboe Global Markets CEO Ed Tilly, and New York Stock Exchange President Tom Farley. In 2018, he become a sought after reporter in the crypto world, interviewing luminaries such as Tyler Winklevoss, the cofounder of Gemini, Jeremy Allaire, the CEO of Circle, and Fundstrat head Tom Lee. For inquiries or tips, email [email protected].