Interview with Robert Dykes, CEO and Co-Founder of Caspian, a Complete Asset Management Solution.
Robert Dykes is the founder and CEO of Caspian, a complete crypto asset management system that provides a single interface to all major cryptocurrency exchanges as well as professional customer care. This interview will provide us with a detailed explanation of the Caspian technology as well as the opportunities that are currently available.
1) Could you please give us your name and a little about yourself?
My name is Robert Dykes, and I’m the CEO and Co-Founder of Caspian. I have a diverse range of experience in the banking and technology industries. For the past 14 years, I’ve served as the CEO of Tora, the world’s top provider of asset management technology solutions. In my previous career, I worked in the corporate and high-tech software industries in Europe, North America, and Asia for firms such as WebPartner and Audiosoft. Princeton University awarded me a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics.
2) Who is Caspian, and what does he do?
Caspian is a joint venture between Tora, a global provider of sophisticated investment management technology, and Kenetic, a prominent blockchain and cryptocurrency investment firm. Tora is a global provider of advanced investment management technologies. A full-stack cryptocurrency trading and risk management platform is made available to institutional investors through this platform.
3) Can you tell me about the technology that powers Caspian?
With distributed services built around a microservice architecture and functionality accessible through thin user interfaces and APIs, Caspian is a cloud-based platform with distributed services built around a microservice architecture. This provides a great amount of flexibility, allowing the platform to handle solutions ranging from private clouds hosted in a typical data centre to solutions provided by established companies in the industry.
Each facet of the system is governed by a separate service, which has its own communication channel, its own API, and a built-in protocol for subscribing to the data it generates. The system is divided into several components. When it comes to the back end, services can be embedded and operated through specialised processes, or a group of services (typically related) can be tied together and run in a single process. The services can provide data in two ways: through a request/response method and through a publish/subscribe mechanism. The backend services are connected through the use of a high-speed, certified message delivery system.
When it comes to handling massive volumes of data, the system is designed to provide low latency for messages travelling to and from the exchanges.
In spite of the fact that Caspian is intended to be a one-stop turnkey solution for the cryptocurrency space, any of its modules can be easily connected to and integrated with other third-party systems and solutions, such as cryptocurrency exchanges or risk management systems or proprietary portfolio management systems.
4) Can you tell us about the most important goods that Caspian offers?
Using Caspian’s cryptocurrency trading and risk management platform, investors may access a complete Order and Execution Management System (OEMS), Position Management System (PMS), and Risk Management System (RMS), all of which are backed by best-in-class customer service.
A sophisticated level of connectivity and interoperability between various cryptocurrencies exchanges is provided by the platform, which has the potential to generate exponential growth in crypto trading activity.
5. What is the procedure for using your asset management and bitcoin investing functionality?
When it comes to crypto currency exchange prices, bid and ask information, order and position statuses, balances and executions from numerous crypto exchanges, Caspian does an excellent job of bringing everything together in one place. Using Caspian’s Smart Order Router, it enables users to take action based on this information by issuing orders to specific exchanges or distributing orders across many exchanges simultaneously (SOR).
A unified control centre optimised for speedy trading is provided by Caspian’s Order and Execution Management System, which serves as the primary hub for portfolio managers and traders. This system is based on the technology developed by Tora and has been further modified to meet the special requirements of the cryptocurrency market.
The composite order book on the platform allows customers to view various exchanges as a single pool of liquidity, which simplifies trading. The composite order book, in conjunction with the SOR, is used to spread a big order among numerous exchanges at the same time in order to obtain the fastest execution at the best price. The SOR algorithm takes into account a variety of factors, including price, liquidity, account balances, and commission, in order to obtain the best possible result with the least amount of slippage.
Another feature integrated into the system is the ability for clients to configure notifications that can show as pop-ups or be delivered via email. Technical indicators, order parameters, position data, and market data can all be used to determine the criteria under which such alerts are produced, and clients can combine them as they see fit. These calculations are made possible by a proprietary macro language that is similar to Excel.
Users can examine all of their trades in one spot, independent of the exchange on which they were completed, thanks to the unified compliance and reporting functionality provided by Caspian’s back-end system.
In the Caspian system, every action takes place is timestamped and recorded, creating an extensive audit trail which is accessible at any time in the future and provides sufficient information for any regulatory audit.
6. Can you tell us about Caspian’s algorithm for executing commands?
In order to provide institutional-grade algorithms from the outset, Caspian leverages on the algorithm architecture developed by Tora and the trading knowledge of Kenetic. In accordance with their trading objectives, traders can assign a trading algorithm to orders from among a variety of different methods available on the market. The orders are executed in accordance with the trading objectives established by the algorithms.
With the application of predefined parameters, traders can influence the behaviour of an order execution algorithm and keep track of its performance throughout the order’s lifecycle. At the same time, more knowledgeable traders can keep a close eye on all of the orders that are sent to the market by the algorithm as they come in. Order parameters can be overridden manually to fine-tune the behaviour of a specific algorithm, which is useful for debugging.
7) What do you have planned for the next two years in terms of a road map?
With 15 exchanges linked, Caspian is currently operational and fully operating. The team is currently working on connecting to a number of other exchanges, and we plan to have as many as 40 exchanges connected to the ecosystem by the end of the third quarter of 2018.
Additionally, we intend to expand the business by introducing substantial new features and capabilities in addition to adding additional exchanges. An app store, expanded risk features, and pre-trade transaction cost analysis (TCA) are all part of this offering. Because of the pre-trade TCA, traders will be able to make better decisions regarding how and where orders should be executed. In addition to the value at risk (VAR), portfolio stress testing, and sensitivity shifts, the risk functionality will include the following: Finally, the app store will let third-party developers to create applications on top of the Caspian platform, such as trading signal feeds, cryptocurrency loan system integration, and user interface enhancement.
The Caspian Token (CSP) is a critical component of the platform, and it will play an essential role in its development and growth. Over time, the CSP is intended to change as the user base expands from an initial core of institutional customers to a more varied group of smaller funds, professional retail traders, and third-party developers. Both Caspian and its token will mature together as both get more complicated and acquire wider acceptance, as we have predicted. At the time of debut, CSP will be a fully functional utility token, delivering savings through payment and staking mechanisms, governance features for key stakeholders, and incentives for third-party developers through our ecosystem development programme.
8. Please tell us about your staff and the customer service you provide.
Caspian is a joint venture between Tora and Kenetic that was established in 2008. In addition to bringing decades of combined experience in banking, technology, and blockchain technology, Caspian’s senior management team draws on the resources of both companies. A number of them have held prominent positions at well-known financial firms and technological organisations, and several of them were early users of blockchain technology as well. This team is in a unique position to develop a robust, versatile, and secure platform that will be capable of attracting the participation of significant institutional and sophisticated cryptocurrency investors.
Caspian is able to take advantage of the combined resources of both companies, which collectively employ more than 300 people worldwide. Tora’s best-in-class support team, which has more than a decade of expertise delivering round-the-clock, multilingual service to clients in the traditional financial world, is among the resources available to customers.
9) Would you be interested in talking about your compliance and security measures?
The importance of security cannot be overstated. The following elements have been included in order to protect the privacy and integrity of all data travelling through the Caspian ecosystem:
- A private leased line is utilised to link the client application to the cloud, or if internet connectivity is needed, it is encrypted using TLS and 2048-bit keys to ensure that no information is leaked.
- Access to a client application can be restricted to a group of IP addresses that have been whitelisted.
The use of “strong” password complexity requirements, as well as two-factor - authentication, is required for user sign-in.
- Back-end access is restricted to a small number of authorised administration and support users.
- The exchange API keys are held on a hardened computer that is also running a message signing service (MSS), which signs exchange API requests for the Caspian backend on the network. Users have the option of running their own instance of this service, which eliminates the need to provide Caspian with API keys in the first place.
- It is Caspian’s commitment to uphold the greatest levels of transparency and compliance that are possible. We are collaborating with a set of leading professional companies in both the legal and accounting fields to ensure that these standards are fulfilled and maintained in their respective fields.
