Inside the Infrastructure Powering Institutional Crypto

Talos is one such company building the infrastructure behind that transition. Its platform supports institutional digital asset trading, portfolio management, settlement, and market data, serving a broad range of financial institutions.

To understand how institutional adoption has evolved and where the market is headed next, we spoke with Samar Sen, SVP and Head of International Markets at Talos, who has over two decades of experience across global capital markets, including leadership roles at Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, Barclays, TradeHero, and Goldman Sachs.

Building The Foundations For Institutional Crypto

When Talos was founded in 2018, the idea that banks and large asset managers would actively participate in digital assets was far from certain. While retail investors could access digital assets, the technology needed by financial institutions simply did not exist. For Talos founders Anton Katz and Ethan Feldman, both veterans of institutional trading systems, the opportunity lay in bringing the standards of traditional capital markets into digital assets.

“The founding thesis has never changed,” Sen said. “If digital assets were going to become a true asset class, institutions would need to participate, and institutions operating at scale need the professional software, plumbing and infrastructure they are familiar with from traditional markets.”

What began as institutional trading connectivity has since evolved into a broader technology stack spanning execution, portfolio management, treasury, settlement, risk management, and post-trade analytics, while connecting clients to more than 100 exchanges, OTC desks, prime brokers, custodians, and other liquidity providers through a single platform. Sen said integrating those functions gives institutions a unified view of their assets instead of relying on multiple systems.

As the infrastructure matured, the profile of institutions entering the market changed with it. Early adoption came from crypto-native hedge funds, followed by quantitative trading firms that recognized familiar market inefficiencies. Brokerages and fintech platforms followed.

“What is genuinely new in the last couple of years is the arrival of traditional asset managers and banks in a committed way,” Sen said.

“Every major bank and asset manager now has a digital asset division and a digital asset head, and they come to Talos with concrete mandates and timelines rather than proofs of concept.”

The Case For Integrated Infrastructure

As more traditional financial institutions entered digital assets, expectations around infrastructure evolved just as quickly. Institutions needed secure custody, governance, compliance controls, and technology capable of operating in markets that never close. Unlike traditional capital markets, digital assets trade around the clock across fragmented exchanges, OTC desks, market makers, and decentralized venues, making operational resilience as important as execution itself.

“When institutions first consider participating in the digital asset market, the questions are always the same,” Sen said. “How do we keep these assets secure? How do we connect to different blockchains? How do we set up an operation that is responsible, licensed and regulated? And how do we do all of that at institutional scale?”

Those demands are reshaping institutional platforms, with firms increasingly bringing execution, market data, portfolio construction, and post-trade operations into a single workflow. Sen said integrated data is now central to the entire investment process.

The move toward integrated platforms has also shaped Talos's acquisition strategy. The addition of Coin Metrics brought market data and blockchain analytics into the platform, while earlier acquisitions expanded capabilities across portfolio construction, risk management, and DeFi infrastructure.

Where Institutional Crypto Goes Next

CIM: Spot Bitcoin ETFs transformed institutional participation. What did issuers need from the underlying infrastructure, and what did the industry underestimate?

Sen: The ETFs turned what had been an access question into an execution question. Issuers and the firms servicing them needed to source liquidity across a fragmented landscape of exchanges, OTC desks and market makers, and to do it at institutional scale, with the price discovery, execution quality and operational controls their regulators and investors expect. This is the problem Talos was built to solve, and the growth of our US business came in a step change following the spot Bitcoin ETF approvals in early 2024. Today, ~90 percent of global spot ETF flow is executed through Talos.

The industry underestimated the operational reality behind ETFs. While ETFs fit traditional markets, the underlying assets trade 24/7 without market closes or circuit breakers, demanding institutional-grade infrastructure. Since launch, US spot Bitcoin ETFs have attracted roughly $51 billion in inflows and now hold more than 1.25 million BTC, reflecting sustained institutional participation rather than speculative interest.

CIM: What did spot Bitcoin ETFs reveal about the infrastructure institutions actually needed?

Sen: Banks were always expected to move later because they need regulatory certainty before committing capital. As that clarity has emerged across jurisdictions, regulation has shifted from being a barrier to a key catalyst for institutional participation.

For most banks, the opportunity goes beyond crypto as an asset class. It is about using blockchain to make existing financial systems more efficient. Stablecoins demonstrated faster cross-border payments and settlement, paving the way for tokenized deposits and other tokenized financial products. Banks see these as practical improvements to capital markets rather than standalone crypto use cases.

Banks have taken a slower, more deliberate path, but the institutions building today are likely to have a significant head start.

CIM: Beyond spot trading, where is institutional demand heading?

Sen: Market structure is increasingly derivatives-driven. As spot exposure migrates into ETFs and corporate treasuries, active liquidity and risk management concentrate in futures and structured products, and institutions need tools for hedging, capital efficiency and volatility management. Stablecoins have evolved well beyond trading tools into 24/7 programmable settlement rails. And tokenization has also moved from concept to implementation, with money market funds, treasury bills, and repurchase agreements increasingly operating onchain.

The next phase of adoption will be led less by new products and more by invisible plumbing: execution layers that abstract fragmentation, data institutions can trust, and infrastructure that fits cleanly into existing operating models.

Looking Beyond Crypto

While adoption is progressing at different speeds across regions, Sen believes the direction is clear. Europe has gained certainty through MiCA, spot Bitcoin ETFs have accelerated institutional participation in the United States, and Asia continues to combine mature financial hubs with fast-growing digital asset markets.

For Sen, however, the current wave of institutional adoption is only the beginning. “Our core belief is that all assets will be digital assets over time, and that crypto is the proving ground rather than the destination,” Sen said. He expects digital assets to become part of broader multi-asset portfolios alongside equities, foreign exchange, and tokenized financial instruments.

Realizing that vision, he argued, no longer depends on technological breakthroughs. The infrastructure largely exists. The bigger challenge lies in bringing regulatory frameworks closer together, building deeper secondary liquidity for tokenized markets, and strengthening institutional credit through transparent, collateralized frameworks. The firms preparing for that future today, Sen believes, will be best positioned to lead as the boundary between traditional finance and digital assets continues to fade.

Reprinted from NARRATIVE by Crypto in India Magazine

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^{Disclaimer: The information herein is provided for informational purposes only. Talos Trading, LLC and its affiliates (“Talos”) make no representations or warranties as to its accuracy or completeness. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation of, any digital asset, security, derivative or trading strategy, nor investment advice. Any references to execution approaches, schedule durations, or participation rate strategies are illustrative of model outputs and do not constitute execution or trading advice. Figures in the agentic illustration are for illustrative purposes only.}

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