Ex-Citadel trader builds crypto exchange on one chip

On the second day of Token2049 Singapore (Oct. 8), Pete Stevenson described his company's pitch in one image. High-speed traders run their software on a box that sits next to the exchange's box, he said. PAX is taking those two boxes and "jamming it all into one chip."

Stevenson, co-founder and CEO of PAX Markets, spoke with TheStreet Roundtable about this new chip, what it does, and who needs it. He argued that speed and trading fees are two sides of the same coin, and that both can be fixed with hardware.

"We're giving you a competitive market with no fees and making the high speed traders pay to get that high speed access," Stevenson said.

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Speed for everyone

Stevenson argues that speed has been reserved for the firms that can afford it.

"Right now, if you are an individual and you want to be trading systematically, it's extremely difficult to compete with institutions who have invested in being fast," he said. "PAX puts everyone on equal footing."

PAX says its on-chip API delivers deterministic tick-to-trade latency measured in nanoseconds. That figure is the company's own claim and has not been independently benchmarked.