CAIS, an alternative investment platform, has named the members of the CAIS Advisory Council (CAC), a standing committee comprised of seasoned and next-generation RIAs, independent broker dealers, RIA aggregators, and custodians. CAC members, offering a diverse mix of skills and experiences, will meet with CAIS’ Executive Committee on a quarterly basis. Specifically, the group will help identify technical opportunities to expand the platform, act as beta test users for new applications, assess the impact of CAIS-sponsored programs, and provide ad-hoc guidance around the overall engagement, needs, and new solutions impacting the alternative investment ecosystem. The CAC members are: Michael Bapis,

CryptoStruct has completed its normalised low-latency market data and order entry gateways to Bitfinex, a digital token trading platform. By using the high-performance strategy framework, CryptoStruct’s clients can now easily scale their trading activity on to the exchange, thereby benefiting from the potential for higher revenue.  Thomas Schmeling, Managing Director of CryptoStruct, says: “We are pleased to announce that we successfully added Bitfinex to our product suite. This allows our clients to access this well-established crypto exchange in low-latency and scale their trading activities further.” “In this collaboration with CryptoStruct, traders will have the capacity to execute advanced strategies, leveraging

Exabel, a data and analytics platform for investment teams, has partnered with Gridwise to deliver a new insights capability for Gridwise’s investment clients. Gridwise Analytics for Investors will provide hedge funds and asset managers with curated insights based on the most comprehensive gig mobility dataset that exists. The new offering will provide users with easy to navigate dashboards, visualisations and KPI monitoring capabilities, and aid in the idea generation process by flagging trend shifts in Gridwise’s datasets.  Joining forces with Exabel provides alternative data vendors with a value-added presentation and monitoring layer and is powered by Exabel’s market leading Al

Carne, a European third-party management company, has adopted new branding. Carne’s role in the asset management industry has grown rapidly over the last number of years, following significant investment in its own proprietary technology, a EUR100 million investment from Vitruvian, and a number of important acquisitions such as AMX.  The company has steadily grown to over 500 employees, with over USD2 trillion in assets under management on behalf of 600 clients across 160 jurisdictions. Amongst those clients are many of the leading financial institutions in the world.   The story behind this growth is the story of the new brand,

AK Jensen Group (AKJ), the leading provider of turnkey trading and infrastructure solutions for fund managers, has closed its acquisition of FMG Malta (FMG), a full scope Alternative Investment Fund Manager (AIFM) for both traditional and crypto hedge funds. The acquisition allows AKJ to acquire a supplemental regulatory structure, distribution network and established client base.  Additionally, the transaction will allow FMG members to utilise AKJ’s turnkey hedge fund offering for the benefit of their clients.

Quant Insight (Qi), a macro analytics provider for institutional investors, has rolled out RETINA 2.0, which includes major updates, new features, and improved functionality. Qi’s RETINA (Real Time Notifications and Alerts) uses data science and analytics to process and distill macro and market information to identify key shifts under the surface of global financial markets, covering 5,000-plus instruments across all asset classes. Key signals are then pushed into clients’ workflows in real time via the Symphony and Slack messaging platforms.    RETINA is fully customisable, and users can set it to monitor whatever they want to track. Notifications cover important

Global investment technology and advisory company Wilshire, and Digital Asset Research (DAR), a provider of crypto asset data and research, has released a classification of the top 1,000 digital assets by market capitalisation. The Digital Asset Taxonomy System (DATS) data is now available to be licensed by: investment research teams to conduct performance attribution; market data platforms to inform trading decisions; and product issuers to build index-linked investment products. The classification system expands beyond digital currencies which has the smallest constituent count of the three DATS supersectors: Computation Platforms – 45.2 per cent the assets; Financial Instruments – 36.0 per

MillTechFX, the fintech affiliate of Millennium Global Investments, has expanded into Europe following the success of its multi-bank foreign exchange (FX) marketplace in the UK and North America. The firm has selected Paris for its European hub and has now received regulatory approval from both French financial authorities – the Financial Markets Authority (AMF) and the Prudential and Resolution Control Authority (ACPR).    MillTechFX’s multi-bank FX marketplace allows asset managers and corporates to significantly reduce both FX costs and the operational burden associated with FX execution and rolling hedging requirements. Its independent end-to-end currency solution provides direct access to wholesale

AltExchange has launched what it says is the industry’s first fully-automated alternative investment reporting and management platform. AltExchange automates and aggregates data on all alternative investments, from small fractional shares of cryptocurrency to multi-million dollar private equity investments, on a single platform. Investors can track up to USD1 million in assets with AltExchange for free. AltExchange is founded by serial entrepreneur Zak Boca and former Bloomberg executive and Bloomberg Terminal developer Kareem Hamady.

CME Group, has launched launched options on Micro bitcoin and Micro ether futures, further expanding its suite of cryptocurrency derivatives offerings. Sized at one-tenth of their respective underlying tokens in size, these contracts will offer a wide range of market participants – from institutions to sophisticated, active, individual traders – greater flexibility and precision to manage their exposure to the top two cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation.