Former Uber Chief Architect Backs Voyager, Commission-Free Crypto Trading Platform
A number of the tech world’s biggest hitters have teamed up on a new crypto project called Voyager, which aims to bring more competition to the commission-free cryptocurrency trading market. Former Uber Chief Technology Officer Oscar Salazar, Uber early investor Philip Eytan and former E* Trade professional trading head Stephen Ehrlich are some of the names behind the platform as it announced its launch on July 25, 2018, with a promise to break new ground in the crypto industry.
Voyager’s Unique Promise
The platform will offer no-fee trading for no fewer than 15 cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and ether. The critical point that Voyager does differently from typical exchange platforms is that it effectively aggregates crypto prices across more than 12 separate exchange platforms, giving customers the ability to trade digital assets at the best possible price.
The absence of platform commissions allows Voyager to compete with Robinhood, the first-mover platform that offers commission-free digital assets trading, albeit restricted to just five cryptocurrencies, compared to Voyager’s 15.
Speaking about the system that makes Voyager’s commission-free trading possible, CEO Stephen Ehrlich said in a statement to Fortune magazine:
“We saw an opportunity to build a dynamic, smart order router that can take advantage of the marketplace and also offer customers no commissions, by beating the average price of the coins at the point in time we execute the trade.”
Next Steps
Voyager is set to go into beta testing this week ahead of its public app launch, tentatively fixed for the end of October 2018. In addition to basic crypto trades, Voyager also aims to offer some added utility to hedge funds and institutional investors in addition to crypto industry updates and insights to help investors make informed trading decisions.
Presently, the identity of the 15 cryptocurrencies selected to be on the platform is still under wraps, but a heavy hint from Ehrlich suggests that the list will be heavily dominated by the most valuable coins on the market, including the aforementioned lodestar duo alongside litecoin (LTC), bitcoin cash (BCH), ethereum classic (ETC), and others. In his words:
“If you see it being traded today by some of the most prominent players, we will definitely have those plus some. [We] don’t think crypto has been adopted yet by the masses in the United States,” he says. I believe the market space itself is extremely large. [We] think the opportunity for both retail and institutional is vast, and we want to be part of that, and help the industry grow, and be good citizens to the industry, and help people get more knowledgeable in crypto assets.”
For now, the CEO says Voyager plans to add a couple of important (if not universally loved) cryptocurrencies such as XRP and Stellar Lumens (XLM) once the platform finds a secure storage solution for the assets.
