A licensed U.S. crypto asset brokerage dubbed ‘Voyager’ has revealed plans to launch a zero-fee mobile trading app in Q4 this year, according to a press release published on BusinessWire today, July 25.
The new platform intends to bring investors a single access point to trade and manage their assets across multiple crypto exchanges, without charging fees or setting minimums for orders.
Voyage will use smart order routing (SOR) -- a software popular with banks and brokers in traditional markets that uses algorithms when directing orders across various trading venues in order to optimize the execution of buy/sell orders.
Stephen Ehrlich, Voyager’s co-founder and CEO, said the impetus for the project derived from a sense of “how impactful this alternative asset class will become coupled with a belief that crypto-assets are empowering a new generation of investors.”
Oscar Salazar, former Chief Technical Officer (CTO) at Uber and a founding investor in the new project, said it would aim to include “trading alerts, social media feeds and news” to help inform users.
While currently in a beta testing phase, the app is slated to launch in Q4 2018 for residents of California, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, and Montana -- before hoping to expand across over 40 approved U.S. states.
The new initiative will likely face steep competition in the U.S. crypto market, most notably from major crypto exchange and wallet service provider Coinbase, which has seen skyrocketing growth: in October 2017, it reported 11.7 million users, up 148 percent from 4.7 million users the preceding year, outstripping even stock brokerage giant Charles Schwab.
Other significant U.S. players include stock and crypto brokerage app Robinhood -- which in which in February revealed its own zero-fee plans -- as well as San Francisco-headquartered Poloniex, acquired by Goldman Sachs-backed P2P payments platform Circle earlier this year.