Written by: Fairy, ChainCatcher Editor: TB, ChainCatcher

Early this morning, Bloomberg reported that the world's largest market maker Citadel Securities, one of the merchants, plans to enter the cryptocurrency market and is seeking to join the list of market makers on multiple exchanges. As soon as the news came out, it attracted widespread attention and discussion in the market. As a top player in the global financial market, how will Citadel Securities' entry change the pattern of the crypto market? What opportunities and challenges will it bring?

This article will conduct in-depth discussion on the significance and potential impact of Citadel Securities' entry into the cryptocurrency market-making field in a ten-question and ten-answer manner.

Q1.Who is Citadel Securities?

Citadel is currently the hottest player in the global financial market. It started as a small hedge fund and gradually grew into one of the most profitable investment companies in the history of the financial industry after years of development.

Citadel consists of Citadel LLC and Citadel Securities, of which Citadel Securities is a global market maker and Citadel LLC is a multinational hedge fund financial services company .

As a core player in the U.S. stock market, Citadel Securities has become the world's largest stock buyer and seller, accounting for nearly a quarter of the U.S. stock market Trading shares, involving more than 11,000 U.S. listed securities and more than 16,000 OTC securities. In August 2024, its stock trading volume even surpassed the New York Stock Exchange.

On April 9, 2024, Citadel Securities was successfully selected as the "2024 Hurun Global Unicorn List" with a corporate valuation of RMB 155 billion, ranking No. 13, becoming a giant that cannot be ignored in the global financial technology field.

Q2.Citadel Securities Team background?

Citadel Securities is founded by legendary investor Ken Griffin and currently is CEO of Zhao Peng. Zhao Peng was born in Beijing and is known as the top Chinese on Wall Street. He was admitted to the Department of Mathematics at Peking University at the age of 14 and then obtained his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. After joining Citadel Securities, it took less than 10 years to go from analyst to partner, general manager and eventually CEO.

Citadel Securities has a highly specialized and international team with a total of approximately 1,600 employees worldwide. 45% of the members have advanced degrees and about 260 doctoral students, with research covering more than 40 disciplines, including applied mathematics, computer engineering, bioinformatics, and geophysics. The team members come from about 80, reflecting their global layout and multicultural background.

Q3.Citadel Securities What was the past attitude towards cryptocurrencies?

In the past, Citadel Securities has been cautious about digital assets due to uncertainty in the U.S. regulatory environment and has avoided engaging in crypto platforms for retail investors.

Founder Ken Griffin, a former Bitcoin skeptic, said Citadel "may enter encryption in the next few months" before the Terra crash in 2022. industry". But the Terra incident and market plunge may have frustrated his confidence in the crypto market, and Citadel ultimately did not take action.

In recent months, Griffin admitted to missing early opportunities in the crypto market and revealed at the 2025 UBS Finance Conference that the company is considering entering the crypto market And serve as a market maker.

Q4. Why is Citadel Securities so powerful?

Citadel Securities' success is its control over order flow and its in-depth mining and application of large amounts of data. The company processes transaction information worth up to $450 billion a day and makes decisions through sophisticated predictive analytics and valuations.

Citadel Securities can accurately evaluateEvaluate the fair value of stocks and options in different market environments. According to insiders, Citadel invests hundreds of millions of dollars in hard technology and quantitative research every year.

Q5.Is there any well-known operation for Citadel Securities?

One ​​of the company's most famous events was the GameStop short squeeze in 2021. Retail investors jointly went long GameStop stock, successfully suppressing the hedge fund that shorted the stock, resulting in hedge fund Melvin Capital suffering huge losses and bankruptcy.

The survey showed that during this process, most of Robinhood's orders went to Citadel Securities. However, Citadel LLC’s fund is a partner of Melvin Capital and has invested $2 billion in the crisis. This dual role of both a market maker and an investor has caused controversy in the market.

Citadel Securities During the fiercest days of the short squeeze battle, the daily trading volume reached 7.4 billion shares, exceeding the industry's average daily trading volume in 2019.

Q6.What does the entry of Citadel Securities mean for the crypto market?

The community's view on Citadel Securities' entry into the crypto market is divided into two factions. One faction believes that this is a good thing, but more people tend to be negative.

Benefits:

Enhance market liquidity: Citadel Securities is the world's leading market maker Their entry can improve the liquidity of the crypto market.

Attract more investors: As a well-known financial institution, Citadel's participation helps attract more investors, especially institutional investors, into the crypto market , further promote capital inflows.

Regulation and Compliance: Citadel operates in traditional markets usually follow strict compliance and regulatory requirements. Citadel's compliance background will accelerate the alignment of crypto markets with traditional financial regulatory systems, which may lead to exchanges and project aspectsProceed with higher KYC/AML requirements.

Badministrative:

May intensify market manipulation: Citadel Securities because of its traditional market Short selling operations are controversial. Community users are worried that as large market makers, their strong market control may intensify the risk of manipulation in the crypto market.

Market transparency: Community members report that Citadel's short positions are not fully disclosed. The 13F document only shows long-term holdings, and its market short selling is usually It is a daily operation, not a long-term bet.

Increased industry concentration: The entry of Citadel Securities may lead to further concentration of market resources in a few large institutions and increased industry concentration. This may make the market more standardized and efficient, but may also weaken the competitiveness of small and medium-sized players.

Q7.Citadel Securities’ strategy adopted in the crypto market?

Citadel Securities plans to join the list of market makers on multiple mainstream crypto exchanges including Coinbase Global Inc., Binance Holdings and Crypto.com. Once approved by the relevant exchange, Citadel Securities plans to first establish a market maker team outside the United States.

The company's final push and interest in the crypto market may be affected by the introduction of new regulatory regulations in the coming months.

Q8.Citadel's current participation in the crypto market?

In 2023, Citadel Securities quietly entered the crypto market through EDX Markets. EDX Markets is a crypto exchange launched by Citadel Securities, Charles Schwab and Fidelity Investments, and is targeted only to institutional investors.

EDX Markets uses traditional market structure to process crypto transactions, providing institutional investors with familiar execution and settlement models.

Q9.Citadel Securities enters the crypto marketChanges in the pattern?

The difficulty of retail investors' profits has increased, and the "grassroots strategy" of retail investors may be further excluded. Market opportunities and resources will be more concentrated on large institutions and high-net-worth investors, and the disadvantages of retail investors in information, technology and funds will be more obvious, and the difficulty of profit will be greatly increased.

Small and medium-sized market makers have increased their survival pressure, and Citadel Securities will put huge pressure on existing small and medium-sized market makers. With its huge capital scale, advanced algorithmic trading systems and a global resource network, it is likely to dominate liquidity provision and transaction execution efficiency. Many small and medium-sized market makers may be forced to exit the market because they cannot compete with it.

In addition, the entry of Citadel Securities may also trigger the reconfiguration of funds from non-market maker institutions.

Q10. Why does Citadel Securities join the crypto market later than its competitors?

Unlike competitors such as Jane Street and Jump Crypto, Citadel Securities previously kept a distance from crypto assets. However, as regulatory pressures in 2023 intensify, companies such as Jane Street and Jump have shrunk their business presence in the U.S. crypto market, providing Citadel Securities with an opportunity to fill the gaps in the market.

Citadel's delay in entry into the crypto market may be due to considerations of market structure and regulatory risks. Its recent expansion of crypto business also reflects its adaptation to the changing U.S. regulatory environment.