The Flow: Why Crypto Needs Wall Street’s Trading Toolkit (feat. Coinroutes CRO and co-founder Michael Holstein)
April 2, 2025
In this episode, Konstantin Shulga, CEO of Finery Markets, speaks with Mike Holstein, Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of Coinroutes. They discuss how Coinroutes is applying institutional-grade trading tools to the crypto market, Mike’s journey from Wall Street to digital assets, and why derivatives are increasingly dominating the trading landscape. They also explore how Coinroutes builds redundancy, connectivity, and infrastructure to handle crypto’s unique challenges.
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Highlights
Mike shares his extensive background and expertise in the crypto space, detailing the innovative solutions offered by Coinroutes for liquidity management and trading efficiency. He addresses the critical issue of market fragmentation and how Coinroutes is tackling it by standardizing APIs and ensuring reliable connectivity across over 50 trading venues. He also reflects on his transition from traditional finance to the crypto world, shedding light on the challenges of client onboarding, KYC processes, and the importance of transaction cost analysis (TCA) in optimizing trading strategies for proprietary traders and institutional clients.
Mike observes a growing demand for delta-neutral strategies and the increasing dominance of derivatives trading over spot trading. Holstein discusses the significant changes in the crypto market structure over the past 5 to 7 years, including the impact of the FTX collapse and the subsequent market recovery. He emphasizes the potential of US stablecoins to drive broader adoption of digital assets and shares his perspective on the future use cases of Bitcoin. Overall, the discussion offers valuable insights into the intersection of traditional finance principles and the rapidly evolving crypto infrastructure.
In this branded podcast series, we dive into the exciting world of institutional crypto trading. Each episode explores the currents shaping the digital asset markets, offering listeners a unique blend of expert insights, industry trends, and forward-thinking strategies. Hosted by Finery Markets’ thought leaders and featuring a roster of distinguished guests from across the financial and technological landscapes, The Flow navigates through the complexities of electronic trading infrastructure, regulatory landscapes, and the evolving dynamics of liquidity and market making.
About Finery Markets
Finery Markets, a premier non-custodial crypto ECN, provides cutting-edge trading infrastructure for institutional players in over 30 countries. We seamlessly connect clients across LATAM, North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Our goal is to power trading technology behind world’s leading brokers, exchanges, OTC desks, payment providers and custodians. Since our launch in 2019, we have been growing our ecosystem, serving 100+ digital asset players, including payment providers, brokers, OTC desks, hedge funds, and custodians. We connect digital asset players and provide them with seamless access to a vast network of partners, enabling them to navigate their operations smoothly and efficiently.
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