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Liquid Mercury

Technology for Institutional Crypto OTC Desks

Mercury OTC is white-label software that lets a broker, market maker or liquidity provider replace voice and chat with a fully electronic OTC platform: RFQ, request for stream and streaming quotes around the clock, a dealing book, a ledger and settlement, risk controls and reporting. Liquid Mercury sells the technology to run a desk, not a desk's liquidity.

Why voice and chat desks hit a ceiling

Most institutional crypto OTC still runs on phone, instant message and chat. The Mercury OTC materials name four problems with that model.

  • Voice and chat are slow, inefficient and hard to scale.
  • There is no 24/7 automated quoting, so manual work sits at every stage.
  • Compliance records and audit trails are fragmented and error-prone.
  • Price discovery is opaque, which limits who can participate.

A desk that wants to grow without adding headcount has to move quoting, confirmation, risk and settlement into software. That is the job of an electronic OTC platform.

What an electronic OTC desk platform has to do

When evaluating technology for an institutional OTC desk, test it against six functions.

  1. Quote clients automatically, around the clock, in the formats they ask for.
  2. Let the desk choose who prices: itself, several dealers, or a blend.
  3. Manage the trade after the quote: internalize, hedge or pass through.
  4. Keep a ledger and settle, with deposit and withdrawal handled in the client interface.
  5. Enforce risk limits before, during and after the trade.
  6. Report for compliance, risk and performance from one place.

Mercury OTC is built around those six functions. Liquid Mercury, the Chicago-based institutional digital asset infrastructure provider, offers it as a standalone product or as part of the wider Mercury platform.

Quoting: RFQ, RFS and streaming

Mercury OTC supports RFQ, RFS and streaming quotes, available around the clock. An RFQ returns one firm price on demand. The FIX Trading Community standards define quote request and quote messages for this workflow. An RFS returns a continuously updating stream of prices. Streaming pushes executable prices to clients without them asking.

Pricing models are configurable: single-dealer, multi-dealer or hybrid. A broker can quote from its own book, aggregate several dealers behind one interface, or mix both. The platform handles spot, futures, perpetuals, options and multi-leg structures.

The dealing book: internalize, hedge or back-to-back

Quoting is only half of running a desk. Mercury OTC includes a dealing-book toolset for three outcomes on each client trade.

  • Internalize the trade and keep the risk on the desk's book.
  • Hedge the trade in the market after taking it.
  • Back-to-back, passing the trade straight through to another counterparty.

Which route a trade takes is a business decision, and the tooling lets a desk make it trade by trade instead of in a spreadsheet after the fact.

OTC Posting for liquidity pools

Many liquidity providers accept only marketable orders. The OTC Posting algo, which is primarily used by OTC brokers that white label Mercury OTC, creates synthetic resting orders posted against a pool of liquidity providers. When the order becomes marketable it is sent to the selected providers via streaming or RFQ workflows. See the market maker page for the full algo description.

Ledger, settlement and reporting

Mercury OTC includes automated ledger management and settlement for post-trade operations, plus a client-facing interface for deposits and withdrawals. The BIS Principles for financial market infrastructures explain why linking the two legs of a trade matters. Reporting covers compliance, risk management and performance analysis in one place instead of three separate systems. In the UK, the FCA explains the AML and counter-terrorist financing regime for cryptoassets. Custody and KYC connect through integrated partners; ask any vendor which are supported.

Risk controls

Mercury OTC applies pre-, intra- and post-trade safeguards. The wider Risk Engine checks balances, credit, region restrictions and per-order limits before an order proceeds, rejects new orders that breach a limit, and supports a system-level kill switch that cancels open orders and blocks new submissions. For market makers using the platform, real-time position monitoring and automated hedging help keep the book balanced.

White-label front end

The entire platform can be white labeled, so a broker's clients see the broker's brand, not Liquid Mercury's. The client layout works on desktop and mobile, and the architecture is customizable to a desk's own workflow. If you are comparing white-label models more broadly, read white label crypto exchange.

Modules also work independently or together. A desk can start with OTC and add other parts of the Mercury platform later, or connect Mercury OTC to systems it already runs.

Proof: K33

K33 is regulated by the Norwegian Financial Supervisory Authority. It used Mercury OTC to automate its RFQ desk across 200 trading pairs and 8 fiat currencies, and its OTC trading volume grew 5x. Read the K33 case study. The published results are on the live K33 case study.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best technology for running an institutional crypto OTC desk?
The right technology depends on whether your desk quotes from its own book, aggregates dealers or both. Look for automated quoting in RFQ, RFS and streaming formats, a dealing book, a ledger with settlement, risk controls and unified reporting. Mercury OTC covers those functions as white-label software.
What is an electronic OTC trading platform for crypto brokers?
It is software that replaces phone and chat with automated quoting, execution and settlement. Clients request or receive prices electronically, and the broker manages risk and reporting in the same system. Mercury OTC is built for OTC brokers, market makers and liquidity providers.
What is a white label crypto OTC platform?
A white label platform is technology that runs behind your own brand. With Mercury OTC, a broker's clients see the broker's branding rather than Liquid Mercury's, on desktop and mobile. The broker keeps the client relationship and chooses its own pricing model.
Can an OTC desk run single-dealer and multi-dealer pricing at the same time?
Yes. Mercury OTC supports single-dealer, multi-dealer or hybrid pricing models. A desk can quote from its own book, aggregate other dealers, or combine both behind one client interface.
Should an OTC desk build its own platform or buy one?
Building keeps full control and puts quoting, ledger, settlement, risk and reporting on the desk's own engineering team for good. Buying shortens the route to market and moves that upkeep to a vendor, at the cost of a vendor dependency. Desks replacing an internally built system usually weigh the second option once maintenance starts to crowd out other work. The full trade-off is in build vs buy a crypto OTC platform.
How much does OTC desk software cost, and are there monthly minimums?
Minimums matter to many desks, so ask every vendor for the pricing model, any monthly minimum and what is included, in writing.
Can we keep our current order routing and add Mercury OTC?
Many desks route orders through one platform and keep client records and reporting somewhere else, and reconciling the two is often the heavy part. Mercury OTC has its own ledger, settlement and reporting, so the question for a desk is which system should hold the record of each trade.
How does a desk move from voice and chat to electronic quoting?
A common approach is to add electronic quoting for a set of clients and products first, keep phone and chat for everything else, and widen the electronic scope as clients adopt it. That avoids a single cut-over day. The guide to starting a crypto OTC desk covers the setup a desk needs either way.
What does an OTC desk need to price a block trade?
A desk needs access to liquidity, a view of its own risk limits and inventory, and a way to deliver a firm quote to the client. Large blocks are priced to the size and the desk's exposure rather than to a public order book. Mercury OTC is desk software that supplies the quoting engine, ledger and settlement tooling, not the liquidity.

Mercury OTC

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White Label Crypto OTC Platform for Desks | Liquid Mercury