Blockchain, the leading provider of cryptocurrency products and creator of the world’s most popular crypto wallet, is launching The PIT, the first microsecond-latency crypto exchange. The institutional-grade platform fills the void for a
reliable, fast, and liquid marketplace where all investors can trade crypto fairly. After extensive, the custom “Mercury” matching engine delivers speeds a quantum faster than any other crypto exchange.

The exchange is available to users in more than 200 countries, will begin with 26 trading pairs, and an expansive global banking network to facilitate deposits, withdrawals, and fiat-to-crypto trading in USD, EUR, and GBP. Initial assets include BTC, ETH, BCH, LTC, USDT, and PAX, with plans to rapidly add additional tokens, pairs, and products in the near term.

The PIT will launch with the support of a diverse, global group of leading market markers backed by a deep lending pool. Blockchain is committed to providing a first-class institutional market and will never trade against its clients or give itself superior access to the market.

“The current crypto exchange market is outdated, broken, and skewed against users. We got tired of waiting for a new entrant to deliver the performance today's traders demand"; says Peter Smith, Co-founder and CEO of Blockchain. “We decided to take matters into our own hands, and built an exchange that puts users first, including the 40M wallets on our platform.”

Over the last year, a stealth team inside the company composed of veterans from NYSE, TD Ameritrade, Google, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Interactive Brokers and Revolut, built The PIT to be lighting fast, fair, and reliable.

“We’re incredibly lucky to have assembled a world class team who have been heads- down building The PIT for the past year. The ‘PIT Crew’ as we call them, has an unmatched level of technical skills and the domain expertise required to develop a product of this caliber,” says Smith.

Nicole Sherrod, the firm’s previously unannounced Head of Trading Products, joined Blockchain last July to lead product development of The PIT. She previously led the active trading product division at TD Ameritrade, the world’s largest online broker. Her experience running global trading platforms at TD Ameritrade and E*Trade has been invaluable in translating institutional trading technology to retail crypto investors.

“I’ve dedicated my career to championing the retail investor and giving them a powerful trading experience that is not only fair, but provides an edge,” says Sherrod. “When Peter approached me with his vision for The PIT, I realized this was an even greater impact on retail crypto traders everywhere;

Tom Haller, previously the Chief Software Architect for trading systems at the New York Stock Exchange, led the development of the exchange’s matching engine.

" Whereas most cryptocurrency exchanges run alongside slow, consumer applications in the cloud, The PIT leverages best practices from Wall Street to facilitate rapid, efficient, and high-quality trade execution at HFT speeds” says Haller.

By hosting its proprietary, microsecond matching engine in Equinix LD4, one of the fastest and most reliable low-latency data centers in the world, The PIT delivers peerless reliability and performance regardless of market conditions.

“GSR is proud to partner with Blockchain.com to provide liquidity to The PIT. This project has been developed by an accomplished team with demonstrated experience in managing one of the largest userbases of crypto traders. The crypto ecosystem needs more exchanges that are striving for institutional-grade architecture, decreased latency, and more robust liquidity. We look forward to playing our part in developing The PIT into one of the leading trading venues,” says Cristian Gil, Co-Founder, GSR, a leading market maker.

This infrastructure underpins a front-end trading interface that allows users to customize the simplicity or sophistication of their experience, ensuring they’ll always have the right level of market insight.

Through a new feature called Blockchain Connect, more than 40M Blockchain Wallets can seamlessly link and transfer crypto to and from their PIT account, enabling users to retain maximum control over their crypto through a single, trusted provider.