Crypto without humans: How much of the market do bots control?

There was a time when a trader could gain an edge by seeing the news before everyone else and clicking a button faster. Today, a significant share of trading takes place at speeds beyond human capabilities, while in some crypto markets more than half of tracked volume is already linked to arbitrage and other automated strategies—so how far has automation gone?

The story began long before Bitcoin. In the late 2000s, Wall Street entered a technological arms race in which milliseconds became worth hundreds of millions of dollars and servers were placed as close to exchanges as possible.

The crypto market inherited this model almost ready-made but took it further: blockchain allows software not only to analyze the market but also to execute transactions independently.

Three milliseconds for $300 million

In 2010, Spread Networks completed construction of a nearly straight fiber-optic line between Chicago and New York. The roughly $300 million project cut round-trip signal latency from about 16 milliseconds to 13 milliseconds.

For a human, the difference is imperceptible. For a high-frequency trading firm, it was enough to spot a price change on one venue before a competitor and take advantage of it elsewhere.