LiquidityBook’s JSON-centric, RESTful APIs empower users to seamlessly integrate and expand in-house solutions

LiquidityBook, a leading provider of cloud-native buy- and sell-side trading solutions, today announced a significant expansion of its API capabilities, providing clients with a fully customizable protocol for building and connecting with the firm’s modular platform. API integration has long been available to users of LiquidityBook’s SaaS-based product offerings, but increased demand for API-centric workflows among clients and prospects prompted a significant upgrade to the user experience.

Between the cloud, low-code solutions and greater access to data, it has become easier than ever for market participants to build their own quantitative trading solutions, necessitating tools that power a variety of use cases beyond basic UI integration and trade uploads. LiquidityBook’s newly enhanced, JSON-centric, RESTful APIs can accommodate any system bandwidth and enable the integration of myriad functions across the front and middle offices, from synchronizing security master and account data to accessing fine-tuned trading capabilities like checking locates and issuing risk and compliance checks. This means clients can leverage LiquidityBook’s APIs to power their entire workflows across the trade lifecycle.

“Using OMS technology with limited integration capabilities forces buy- and sell-side firms to manage multiple independent silos, creating redundancy, cost and correctness errors,” said Shawn Samuel, Chief Technology Officer at LiquidityBook. “These challenges spurred us to enhance our API offering – a logical next step in maximizing the flexibility of our solution. Our solution enables clients to incorporate the exact capabilities they need at the right level, enabling a large and diverse range of trading workflows. For example, clients can send a basket of orders to LiquidityBook and have us handle compliance checks, allocations, locates and routing in one shot, or they can incorporate capabilities such as LiquidityBook’s positions, locates and compliance modules as native components of their trade construction workflow, leading to a seamless and more powerful trading process.”

The API enhancements also enable LiquidityBook users to send customized alerts, perform remote validations and manage more compliance and regulatory processes, among other key functions. Clients benefit from robust API documentation via Swagger and endless scalability unlocked by AWS.

“This is one area where our modular architecture really stands out,” Samuel added. “Our enhanced API means clients can not only leverage our solution in myriad ways, but also pair it with proprietary or third-party systems to extend their current capabilities in a highly targeted way. With the power to manage our platform and tools via their own internal systems, it’s no surprise that a significant number of our new clients are requesting API onboards.”

New smartInfrastructure service, TimeJump, architected to deliver complete ransomware recovery for both critical application data and infected operating systems

Nebulon, Inc.^®, the pioneer of smartInfrastructure^TM, an infrastructure operations SaaS that transforms an on-premises server estate into a cloud operating platform, today unveiled Nebulon TimeJump^TM, a solution architected to address key ransomware mitigation challenges faced by CIOs and CISOs. Nebulon TimeJump is the first and only combined server and storage solution architected to offer complete ransomware recovery in less than four minutes.

According to pro-consumer technology website Comparitech, an investigation of 186 ransomware attacks on US businesses in 2020 found that downtime costs alone totalled $20.9B, averaging a staggering $112M per attack. Bringing application data back online quickly, reliably, and at scale is imperative. Ransomware recovery solutions offered by traditional 3-tier and hyperconverged infrastructure vendors can address part of the problem with a “snapshot” of customer data. However, when ransomware strikes, the attack can infect operating systems and disable critical infrastructure, preventing immediate recovery from data snapshots. The resulting infrastructure recovery can take hours—or even days—and lead to unnecessary downtime costs.

Nebulon TimeJump provides four-minute restore capabilities not only for critical application data but also infected operating systems, so application infrastructure can be brought back online near-instantly. With the debut of TimeJump, IT organisations no longer have to suffer through a lengthy manual recovery of critical infrastructure. They can instead reduce application infrastructure recovery from hours or days to under four minutes.

“A ransomware attack on your business is more a case of when, not if. Therefore, any ransomware protection strategy must go beyond prevention tactics and incorporate rapid recovery to mitigate downtime and related costs,” said David Floyer, CTO and Cofounder, Wikibon. “The recovery solution from Nebulon is independent of the servers and allows the restoration of both data and the underlying operating systems. This capability means IT can restore whole application clusters online in minutes.”

“Minimising the impact of ransomware attacks is critical for the continuous service delivery demanded by our clients. Therefore, naturally we implement preventative measures. Being able to recover quickly is imperative when—not if—ransomware strikes, but recovery tools aren’t accessible when their supporting infrastructure is infected.” said Damon Dance, Director of Sales, Inca Cloud. “Nebulon is our antidote to the paradox of management tools depending on the infrastructure they manage. If/when our infrastructure is ever compromised, Nebulon TimeJump will get our infrastructure back up and running so we can restore operations in minutes. No other combined server and storage solution on the market can do this that quickly.”

Not only does Nebulon provide a breakthrough ransomware recovery solution, the company’s smartInfrastructure offering also protects against ransomware attacks due to a day-one design decision. All critical enterprise data services, such as erasure coding, encryption and snapshots, are enabled by Nebulon’s PCIe-based services processing unit (SPU). The SPU connects to the server’s internal solid-state disks (SSDs) and operates in a separate security domain from the server’s CPU, memory, network, and operating system. Isolated compute and storage security domains prevent ransomware from infecting the data protection software that enables reliable recovery of the operating system and application data. Alternative solutions like hyperconverged infrastructure share server and storage security domains, so a ransomware attack on the server easily infects storage resources and protection software. This is particularly problematic when infrastructure management tools used for recovery depend on a healthy hypervisor, operating system, and software defined storage (SDS) data services.

Beyond rapid ransomware recovery and an architected security domain within the server, Nebulon further immunises the infrastructure against the persistent threat of cyber criminals. Nebulon ON, the company’s cloud control plane, employs end-to-end hardware-based cryptographic authentication, and all communications are protected by always-on, end-to-end encryption.

“CIOs and CISOs are squarely focused on protecting their organisations from hackers on the lookout for the most vulnerable infrastructure attack vectors,” said Nebulon CEO Siamak Nazari. “Nebulon can help them sleep a little better at night knowing that our solution can both minimise the data services attack surface for ransomware, as well as help simply and quickly recover in under four minutes—an industry first we a proud to be a part of.

• Across all ages 20% have invested and 25% think it's the future
• Poll marks launch of StarkNet, a new platform to make crypto apps 'as widespread as smartphone apps'
• Blockchain's bandwidth is already overwhelmed; poll results raise questions of how it will cope with expectations

Some 58% of Brits aged 18-to-24 have invested in cryptocurrency, according to a new opinion poll.

Across all ages, 20% have invested and 25% think crypto will be the "future of finance."

Those who have invested are constantly checking and adjusting their assets. Some 81% have at least one crypto tracker on their phone, and 40% say they "fiddle or amend" their holdings daily. Only 19% of those with crypto holdings let a week pass without making changes.

"This poll shows how widespread crypto has become, while indicating just how huge it will soon become," said Eli Ben-Sasson, co-founder and president of StarkWare Industries, which commissioned the research.

"We see that young Brits, those who will soon shape the economy, are especially tuned in to crypto. It's an important insight that they are investing in large numbers, and overwhelmingly convinced crypto will be 'the future'."

StarkWare commissioned the poll to mark the launch of the new StarkNet platform, which aims to make it easy and cost-effective for developers to build blockchain apps — a key requirement to make crypto part of everyday life for the general public. Until now, crypto app rollout has been slow because a crisis surrounding blockchain's bandwidth has acted as a deterrent.

Uri Kolodny, co-founder and CEO of StarkWare, commented: "We wanted to research public opinion as we launch StarkNet, to get a sense of how much the general public expects to use crypto over the coming years. The results are exciting, but also unsettling."

"They highlight huge enthusiasm for crypto, and show that blockchain is creaking under the weight of current use. Unless we start to work smarter, blockchain simply won't be able to cope with growing demand."

StarkNet is a platform for developers to create crypto apps, initiated by StarkWare and due to be fully decentralized so that in the future it is owned by everyone and no one, like the internet.

StarkNet uses an advanced math-based compression system so that apps can be fully secured by the Ethereum blockchain while only a fraction of their information is actually added to the chain. In blockchain jargon it is known as a Layer 2.

Transaction fees, which rise based on a supply-and-demand formula as blockchain use increases, are sharply reduced. These fees have prevented the development of crypto apps for many everyday uses, and Kolodny predicts that making them tiny, StarkNet will lead to "a building boom on blockchain and make crypto apps as widespread as smartphone apps."

Asked about non-fungible tokens, NFTs, 30% of 18 to 24-year-olds said they would be "excited" to use them if they were sustainable. Among people aged 25 to 34, 28% were excited by the prospect of sustainable NFTs.

Some 32% of 18 to 24-year-olds subscribed to the view that "reducing the carbon footprint of cryptocurrency is important to me and, if made possible, would make me more inclined to use it."

Kolodny commented: "We expected to detect concern over crypto's carbon footprint per transaction, and enthusiasm for reducing it — but not to the high levels we found."

"We were pleasantly surprised that people seem to understand the environmental challenge of crypto."  

"StarkNet represents one of the most important steps so far on the road to making blockchain more sustainable. Our scaling tech massively reduces the electricity use per transaction, and will complement other initiatives that are underway to address crypto's overall environmental impact. The power normally used to mint a single NFT can cover the minting of around 12,000 via StarkNet."

StarkNet is called a Layer 2 scaling solution because it conducts the computation for transactions away from the blockchain ("Layer 1"), and then submits a large batch of transactions to the chain via a single concise proof. Powered by a mathematical system called STARK, co-invented by Ben-Sasson and other researchers, it retains all the security benefits associated with transacting directly on Layer 1.

Delta Data, a leading pooled investment fund software provider, today announced that Whitfield Athey has stepped down as CEO of the company. He will be succeeded by Cameron Routh, most recently Head of Tax Solutions at Refinitiv. Cameron is an experienced fintech executive and entrepreneur, with strong go-to-market experience, who has successfully grown and sold multiple companies, including GainsKeeper and Scivantage. He will lead Delta Data as CEO after Delta Data’s acquisition in December, 2021 by Terminus Capital Partners, a growth-oriented software private equity firm.

“We thank Whitfield for his over seven years of service as CEO of Delta Data, during which time the company significantly expanded its customer base and product capabilities,” said Alex Western of Terminus Capital Partners, on behalf of the board. “We are delighted to welcome Cameron Routh to Delta Data as CEO. His successful track record of leadership, customer success, and growth are exactly what we need to carry the company forward, as we progress toward our vision for Delta Data to be the best pooled investment fund software company in the world,” he adds. 

Most recently, Cameron Routh was Head of Tax Solutions for Refinitiv, a global provider of financial software and risk solutions. Refinitiv acquired Scivantage in March 2021 where, for over 14 years, Cameron served as Chief Commercial Officer, EVP of Corporate Development, and Managing Director of Strategic Products. Of note, he established the Maxit Cost Basis Reporting platform and scaled it to mid-double-digit recurring-revenue business. Earlier in his career, he co-founded GainsKeeper, which was acquired by Wolters Kluwer in 2002. 

Cameron currently serves on the board of Cure ATRT Now, a non-profit organization supporting pediatric brain cancer research. Originally from Amherst, MA, Cameron earned his BA in History from Boston University and his MBA from the University of Chicago. 

“It's an honor to join the outstanding team at Delta Data, and I look forward to building on the great foundation and growth potential in the business. Delta Data has long been one of the most trusted names in back-end solutions for the pooled funds industry, counting many of the industry’s top names as clients. I’m excited to broaden those relationships, as well as introduce new clients to Delta Data’s mission critical solutions for staying ahead of regulatory and technology change,” said incoming CEO Cameron Routh.

 Leading Crypto ETF Issuer Accelerates its Global Expansion By Establishing A European Presence

Hashdex, a leading global crypto-focused asset manager, today announced the appointment of Laurent Kssis as Managing Director and Head of Europe. Mr. Kssis will spearhead Hashdex’s European expansion as part of the firm’s ongoing efforts to help investors around the world better understand and gain a diversified exposure to the crypto asset class. To support the continental expansion, Hashdex continues to actively hire new members across London, Zurich, Paris, and Lisbon.

Mr. Kssis brings to Hashdex an extensive set of skills in crypto asset management and European crypto exchange-traded products (“ETPs”), as well as two decades of proven experience in Delta One trading and in the exchange-traded fund (“ETF”) market. Mr. Kssis most recently served as Managing Director and Global Head of ETPs at Swiss issuer 21Shares, where he listed more than 25 crypto ETPs across several European regulated exchanges - which were World and European firsts. In that time, Mr. Kssis actively contributed to the raise in assets under management from roughly $20 million to $1.75 billion. He also served on the issuer’s board of directors, where he was instrumental in developing and lobbying for innovative single tracker product launches for its European expansion.

“As a true pioneer in the European crypto fund management space, Laurent’s deep, extensive knowledge and practical experience will be undisputed assets to Hashdex and strengthen our leadership team,” said Marcelo Sampaio, Co-Founder & CEO of Hashdex. "His background in crypto exchange-traded products, particularly in Switzerland - which has become the leading venue for listing crypto ETPs - will be invaluable in supporting Hashdex as we accelerate our international reach, expand our global footprint with innovative institutional-grade products and services, and build pathways to connect Swiss and European investors to the crypto economy. We are honoured to have him join our team.” 

“Having spent years working on Exchange Traded Products and ETFs, and seeing this industry mature to institutional levels with trillions in assets, we are witnessing unprecedented demand for exchange traded crypto products. I am invigorated at the prospect of driving Hashdex’s strategic vision into Europe,” said Laurent Kssis. “Following Hashdex’s launches of the world's first crypto index ETF, the Hashdex Nasdaq Crypto Index ETF (HASH11) and the recent DeFi ETF (DEFI11), I am confident that we can further create innovative yet simple, cost-effective and secure products that meet the needs of the European investors who are constantly asking for better diversified strategies. I look forward to developing the firm's talented team to new levels as we bring compelling crypto investment strategies to institutional, private wealth and global family office investors across Europe.” 

Prior to joining 21Shares, Mr. Kssis was CEO of the Swedish based crypto issuer XBT Provider AB, now a CoinShares company, where in 2017 he oversaw the first European Ether ETP listing, which raised $400 million within weeks of launching. Before that, Mr. Kssis had more than 15 years of combined ETF experience with leading firms such as Labranche, Bluefin and Societe Generale. He was also actively involved in the primary and secondary capital markets, where he served with many European ETF issuers including Lyxor and IndeXchange (now Blackrock). In 2015, he oversaw Coinsilium group (AQX:COIN) in becoming the first blockchain venture company to IPO on the UK stock exchange, where he was subsequently appointed Non Executive Chairman. Mr. Kssis recently stepped down after 3 years as board member of Swedish Index Provider Vinter Co., raising $3.4 million in its latest fundraise in 2021. He holds an accredited post graduate Financial Times Non-Executive Director Diploma and a BSc Honours degree in Mathematics from City University, London.

Today’s announcement builds on Hashdex’s ongoing international expansion and position as a global pioneer in crypto asset management. The firm recently launched DEFI11, the world’s first decentralized finance ETF, and accelerated its U.S. expansion through the appointments of Matthew Flood as Head of Business Development-U.S. and Jack Song as Head of Corporate Communications and Chief of Staff-U.S. Hashdex is an exclusive partner of Nasdaq and co-developed the Nasdaq Crypto Index™ (NCI™), which benchmarks the institutionally investable crypto market. The firm also holds an exclusive partnership with Victory Capital, focusing on distributing products in the U.S. that follow the NCI™. Hashdex continues to hit major milestones as part of its mission to accelerate the development of the crypto ecosystem by empowering global participation through building products that provide diversified exposure. 

DataGuard, the compliance software company with a focus on data privacy and information security, has hired Michelle Schrey as VP of Finance. Schrey has over 10 years of experience in investment banking, corporate finance, enterprise SaaS, and digital payments. At DataGuard, Schrey will head the Finance and Business Intelligence teams.

In her new role, London-based Schrey will help DataGuard solidify its position as a leading player in the field of Privacy, InfoSec, and Compliance (PIC). “I am excited about joining the DataGuard team. I’m particularly drawn to the company’s entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to radically change how businesses worldwide operationalise data privacy and information security,” says Schrey. “DataGuard’s impressive track record, talented team, and all-in-one solution put the company in a unique position to become a leader in the PIC market, helping companies thrive by protecting the data of their employees and customers.”

Schrey joins DataGuard from SumUp, a globally leading digital payments company, where, as Vice President Corporate Finance, she oversaw all aspects of fundraising, investor reporting and investor relations. Prior to SumUp, Schrey was with the global investment firm Sixth Street Partners for 5 years, where she focused on investments in SaaS and payment services. During her previous tenure at Deutsche Bank in both Frankfurt and London, she conducted numerous transactions, including domestic and cross-border mergers, IPOs, and other forms of equity and debt capital market financing. Schrey holds an MSc in Finance from the London School of Economics and her Bachelor’s in Business Administration from the European Business School in Germany.

Schrey reports to Thomas Regier, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of DataGuard. He says: “We are very proud that Michelle is joining us. She brings an excellent background in Finance, SaaS, and Growth to DataGuard – and a strong conviction in our purpose. Moreover, she is an extraordinary leader who will use her talent and experience to lift DataGuard to the next growth level – to help even more organizations thrive with privacy, information security, and compliance.”

 India’s largest Crypto investing app CoinSwitch has been certified as a Great Place to Work®, recognizing its ownership and purpose-driven culture, flexible work-life, and health benefits and rewards.

“We at CoinSwitch are bringing together a team of highly driven and talented employees to build the future of the internet, Web3, in India, in a fun and engaging workplace. It, therefore, gives me immense pride to be recognized as a Great Place to Work. This survey also provided us with actionable insights that can help us retain our position as an employer of choice in India’s Crypto and wealth tech space,” said Ashish Singhal, Co-founder and CEO, CoinSwitch.

“At CoinSwitch, all 500-plus employees are committed to creating an ecosystem that simplifies Crypto and prioritizes user protection. Their customer obsession and will to fail fast and build better — the CoinSwitch way — earned us the trust of over 15 million registered users within 20 months of launching in India,” Singhal said. 

Valued at $1.9 billion, CoinSwitch is backed by reputed investors including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital, Ribbit Capital, Paradigm, and Coinbase Ventures.

"CoinSwitch believes in building an employee-first culture and employees are at the heart of all that we do. Our best-in-class policies and benefits stem from the voice of our employees. Throughout the employee lifecycle, we ensure that their experience is unique by building effective communication and collaboration, adding unique benefits, and creating a path between employees and the leadership,” Singhal added.

Great Place to Work® is the global authority on workplace culture. Since 1992, they have surveyed more than 100 million employees worldwide and used those deep insights to define what makes a great workplace: trust. Their employee survey platform empowers leaders with the feedback, real-time reporting, and insights they need to make strategic people decisions. The Institute serves businesses, non-profits, and government agencies in more than 60 countries and has conducted pioneering research on the characteristics of great workplaces for over three decades.

In India, the institute partners with more than 1100 organizations annually across over 22 industries to help them build High-Trust, High-Performance Cultures™ designed to deliver sustained business results. Hundreds of CEOs and CXOs from India Inc. are part of the great place community that is committed to the vision of making India a great place to work FOR ALLTM.

The Institute’s research shows that great workplaces are characterized by great leadership, consistent employee experience, and sustainable financial performance. These organizations are able to deliver a consistent experience to all their employees irrespective of their role, gender, tenure or level in the organization. Their leaders believe in the vision of creating and sustaining a Great Place to Work FOR ALL and role model being ‘FOR ALL’ Leaders.

Learn more at https://www.greatplacetowork.in/ and on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.