IG mulls adding Ripple, Litecoin to offering

Electronic trading major IG Group Holdings plc (LON:IGG) is planning to enlarge its cryptocurrency offering soon. In a Community post, a representative of the broker said that Ripple and Litecoin are set to join the offering soon, although the precise timing is uncertain.

“We feel we are at a point where we can add Ripple and Litecoin to the IG dealing platform. We shall be doing this shortly however I can’t give a guaranteed date as it’s dependent on a couple of other factors”.

It would be relatively easy to add a new cryptocurrency, IG’s representative explained, however “we need to make sure that the offering we create can work for 150,000 clients who may all overwhelmingly want to deal in one direction. There is significant due diligence which needs to be done to make sure clients can always exit their leverage positions easily and quickly, that their positions are safe, and that there aren’t any systemic risks”.

Regarding the possibility to trade cryptocurrency crosses, IG notes that a true crypto cross will be when one cryptocurrency is quoted against another cryptocurrency (Bitcoin, for instance, is quoted against Ether). One would therefore trade BTC/ETH, ETH/BCH, BTC/BCH, for example. At present, IG’s clients are able to replicate this by buying one cryptocurrency and selling the other, however, this new offering should wrap it all into one simple trade.

After an analysis of historical clients trades, IG concludes that there aren’t many who execute like this so it hasn’t been a priority, however, the broker is still looking at it based on a few client requests. This would also allow for crypto trading on the different ratios between pairs which should, in theory, internalize more flow and reduce the likelihood of unlongable / unborrowable.

IG already offers trading in Bitcoin and Ethereum, with the latter added to the lineup in August this year.