How Do We Improve the Banking Experience When Accessing Crypto?

The importance of fiat

Whether we like it or not, fiat is still the access point for crypto. Until we are fully decentralised and decoupled from traditional banking systems, users of crypto will convert native fiat currencies into crypto to then use in the crypto ecosystem. This is evident everywhere; Bitcoin is measured in USD or GBP, rather than a value in itself. Then there is the emergence of stablecoins over the past few years, which is a testament to this symbiotic relationship; any perceived value in crypto is always pegged against a fiat currency. It is unsurprising, then, that this dependency on fiat also imports some of the shortcomings of traditional banking systems into crypto. Contrary to the popular utopian view of decentralised finance, users of crypto are still limited by issues such as local fiat restrictions. The solution, therefore, is to build a better bridge
Bridge

The bridge or liquidity bridge is an essential component for brokers that are enabling their clients to trade at interbank rates directly via a Prime Broker or a Prime-of-Prime (PoP). While market makers do not require a bridge in order to service its clients, brokers which are sending through orders to a liquidity provider or an electronic execution venue need a bridge to connect their trading platform to the interbank market.Bridges are used extensively in forex trading, specifically for Metatrader, the world’s most popular trading platform. Bridges can be connecting a broker to a prime of prime or to a prime broker. Connectivity providers are delivering solutions mostly oriented towards the most popular platforms in the market – MetaTrader 4 (MT4) and MT5. The component is another crucial part of proper risk mitigation for the brokerage. The Need for Bridges in Retail TradingGiven the rise of the MT4 and MT5 platforms, there has since arose a need for bridge technology. This is due to the fact that Metaquotes, the company behind MT4, only envisaged their platform being used as a purely an interface client broker trading.This means the broker set the quotes, set the spread, and traded against the client. However, the trader actually had no direct access to the wholesale forex market, yet many brokers were unwilling to let go of MT4 in favor of other platforms which already inherently supported access to the market via Electronic Communications Networks (ECN) due to MT4’s huge popularity and thus potential loss of clients….