Cryptocurrencies Trends – An Interview with Spotware’s Head of Business Development

1. The key to business success in such a competitive market as Forex is, of course, staying one step ahead of the competition. Who do you see as your main competitors, and what are the platform X-factors that are keeping Spotware in the league of leaders?

Indeed, we are part of a super fast-paced industry. This means that the skill of noticing trends early on bringing supporting features to life in our platform really adds value. To be entirely honest, I would like to see more competition in the market, but unfortunately very few established platform providers are actually improving their products, rather sticking to “don’t fix something that’s not broken”. That being said, even small startups can be healthy for the market. It’s all about product focus for your appropriate market.

At this point, what puts us ahead is the fact that we continue to improve and deliver based on the feedback of our brokers and traders. This year was marked with a whole series of major product improvements, including bringing cTrader Copy to Mobile. The immense growth of Copy volumes is a good example of how we are doing in this sector. In fact, some of our brokers are now doing double the volumes they were doing on cMirror – a cTrader Copy predecessor.

2. We hear you have made enhancements for cryptocurrency accounts that have little to no Fiat requirements. Could you tell us a little more about it?

Well, for starters, it would be hard to ignore crypto in 2020 and 2021. Crypto traders love to get exposure to other assets when crypto volatility dies down, and while crypto volatility is usually high, it is currently on the very low end of normality.

On the one hand we have these traders representing large volumes. On the other hand, we have transactional benefits for both brokers and traders. With the new Crypto accounts, traders don’t need to undergo the lengthy process of selling crypto to fiat, then sending funds to their account, and then depositing the sum into their brokerage account. Brokers, in turn, can process deposits/withdrawals immediately and cut down on banking and PSP fees. Additionally, brokers generally prefer to have funds in their wallets straight away, rather than holding them for up to 6 months with their PSP.

3. Do you see cryptocurrency becoming an even greater trend as central banks enter the crypto space?

By now we all know about the US’ Central Bank Digital Currency [CBDC]. plans, and there are similar initiatives in countries like China. Ultimately it makes sense for authorities to have everything on-chain. Both for programmable money and for financial crimes’ transparency. Anyone with a basic understanding of blockchain will agree that most currencies are in fact unbelievably transparent. Bitcoin never was anonymous, only pseudonymous.

From a trading perspective, crypto offers excellent risk/reward opportunities and that is why many traders are now demanding crypto in one form or another – the light demand being crypto deposits.

4. How do you see the development of the crypto asset class from here?

By now it is clear that crypto as an asset class is here to stay. We already have so many sub-asset classes within this – just think about NFTs, DeFi, Derivatives, etc., and each one has its own respective market.

Focusing more on our niche, I can confirm that more brokers are making crypto CFDs available and the number of pairs available is vastly growing. Obviously those pairs have become more liquid, and therefore it is easier for liquidity providers to facilitate the addition of more pairs and leverage.

Outside of trading instruments, the crypto macrotrend means that we will be seeing both – traders from traditional crypto exchanges and forex traders, looking to have crypto deposits/withdrawals and even crypto-denominated base accounts.

5. Could you tell us a bit more about Spotware’s future plans and ambitions?

Crypto deposits/withdrawals and base accounts are a new feature that our brokers are very excited about because it represents reduced costs and a whole new market share of traders. The accounts will have 8-digit decimal accuracy which is a first. It is a complex task to sustain this kind of accuracy, but we feel like it’s a great challenge to face now, as opposed to when the price of Bitcoin is much higher, and these decimals become more and more meaningful in dollar terms.

Another plan I can share and tell you about is a charting-specific release. We are going to give FX/CFD traders an unsurpassed charting experience. While there are good all-round platforms, as well as those for specific markets (e.g: futures or options), there really are no go-to packages for the FX-focused trader, which is what we are planning to bring to the industry table.