APAC Firms Focus on Market Infrastructure Innovation

Derivatives already account for the majority of trading activity in crypto markets, with perpetual futures driving most exchange volume in 2025.

"Liquidity has not been uniform," he said. "Periods of thinner order book depth have translated into sharper price moves."

"When derivatives dominate volume but liquidity tightens quickly, execution quality and risk controls become challenging," said Sen.

Sen believes that the innovation opportunity is about improving how participants interact with the markets.

Options include aggregating liquidity across venues, including frameworks for unifying liquidity across similar perpetual futures and spot instruments, refining smart order routing to reduce slippage, offering advanced tools for multi-leg and over-the-counterOTC execution, and strengthening portfolio level risk analytics so exposure can be managed holistically across spot and derivatives.

It also means improving capital efficiency through better centralised margin visibility andensuring that trading, reconciliation and settlement workflows are properly connected rather than siloed.

Sen noted that crypto options, on the other hand, represent a fraction of the spot volumes today, whereas other mature asset classes, like equities, typically trade in double digit multiples of spot volume.

"These options are the crucial building blocks for structured products, which have beenvery popular in the APAC region for decades," said Sen. "Electronifying todayʼs highly fragmented OTC markets, and providing useful tools to seamlessly construct structured products, are two additional opportunities for product innovation in the crypto derivatives space in APAC."

As APAC institutions move from exploratory mandates to live allocation, their priorities areincreasingly operational.

"They want reliability, transparency and integration with existing systems," said Sen. "The firms that focus on making crypto derivatives markets easier to access and manage will be better positioned than those focused purely on new product launches."

Sen said that Talos' focus in the APAC region is on expanding and deepening technical integrations with exchanges, institutional liquidity providers and service providers that are building derivatives capabilities in the region.

"The priority is ensuring institutions can access regional liquidity through workflows that align with traditional capital markets standards," he said.

As firms move from pilot programmes to live trading and portfolio integration, demand has shifted from basic access to institutional-grade infrastructure, particularly in derivatives, risk management and execution workflows.

"For Talos, this reinforces our focus on deepening local institutional relationships, expanding derivatives connectivity, and strengthening portfolio construction and post-trade capabilities that align with the needs of banks, asset managers and trading firms already active in traditional markets such as foreign exchange and commodities."

Over the long term, as digital assets integrate more fully into core financial market structure, Sen said that Talos' strategy in APAC is to be the institutional operating layer that supports both buy-side and sell-side participants as they build durable digital asset businesses within an increasingly regulated framework.

Nasdaq has partnered with digital asset infrastructure provider Talos to build anintegrated system for managing tokenised collateral, as institutions look to connecttraditional and digital asset markets.

In January, Talos raised $45 million in series B extended round from a group of newinvestors, including Robinhood, Sony Innovation Fund, IMC, QCP and Karatage.

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