Welcome everyone, it’s Aaron Fifield and I’m glad you’re here. Before I tell you who my guest is on this week’s episode, I wanted to let you that I’m hosting a live podcast down in Sydney. It’ll be on August 29th, a Tuesday.
If you happen to be in the area, I’d love to see you there. Come on, what’s a better way to spend your Tuesday evening? Not only will there be a live podcast interview, there’ll also be pizza, beers and the opportunity to hang out with at least 100 traders. Really, it’ll be such a great evening. Thanks to Trading Technologies for supporting and sponsoring the event.
Alright, back to this week’s episode. I have special guest Bobby Cho. He’s a cryptocurrency trader over at Cumberland Mining, which is part of DRW Trading.
Ever since he has been involved with financial markets, Bobby decided to gravitate towards mostly illiquid and difficult to trade products since 2008. I guess you could say that it was a natural progression for him to look at Bitcoin as well as other cryptocurrencies. He started doing this while was vice-president at SecondMarket around 2013.
The next year, he then became the Director at itBit, a Bitcoin exchange. In 2016, he joined Cumberland Mining, which is one of the biggest institutional liquidity providers in cryptocurrencies.
In this episode, Bobby and I chat about some interesting stuff, from the challenges of exchange arbitrage, the entrepreneurial mindset that powers DRW, the infrastructure of crypto markets, to the real-world value of Blockchain technology.
What’s Covered in This Interview:
- Bobby talks about how he discovered Bitcoin. He does into why he felt compelled to improve its infrastructure and his vision of it being of interest to institutions.
- Why the trading firm DRW was attracted to cryptocurrency markets even though it’s already well established in traditional securities and products.
- Bobby compares cryptocurrency markets and equity markets in terms of market making and why exchange arbitrage is actually a lot harder than most people imagine.
Links and Resources:
- Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System – very informative whitepaper
- CumberlandMining.com
- @RobertJCho – Follow Bobby on Twitter
- The Adventures of a Modern Renaissance Academic
