There seems to be a highly rising trend for opening OTC trading channels, especially between exchanges and trading businesses.

Back in April we reported that a trading activity on Circle Trade, one of the biggest OTC channels, has been soaring even though the bear market was already in full force by then. Not long ago leading crypto exchange Huobi has also announced the Huobi OTC platform that aimed to compete for this market segment.

OTC or over-the-counter trading means that trading is usually done directly between two parties off the exchanges. In these cases, we have validating third parties who can jump in during a dispute for either a minimal fee or for free. This means that trading is secured, but can still avoid heavy fees and liquidity problems that investors encounter on exchanges.

For years LocalBitcoins was the king between OTC trading, but institutional investors seem to be favoring other channels as well these days. OTC volumes on LocalBitcoins have successfully topped June/July levels meaning that there is again a renewed interest in buying Bitcoin off exchanges. This could be a reason why recently 2 major crypto exchanges announced their new OTC trading services right after another.

US-based Kraken announced via an official blog post that it will create a new OTC trading platform that will focus on large block trades (going as high as hundreds of million in Euro) for clients worldwide. One of the oldest major crypto exchanges, which is sitting at the 14th spot according to daily volumes reported by coinmarketcap, is employing 9 professional traders who will serve customers all over North America, Europe and Asia.

Not only is Bitcoin supported, but a large range of altcoins as well including: Ether (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ether Classic (ETC), Ripple (XRP), Lumens (XLM), EOS (EOS), Litecoin (LTC), Monero (XMR), Dash (DASH), Zcash (ZEC) and a lot more.

The second exchange announcing it’s OTC trading service is RightBTC, which is sitting at the 29th spot according to daily volumes reported by coinmarketcap. The Dubai based exchange is planning to offer no withdrawal limits and zero trading fees in order to attract new customers.

This service will also focus on institutional and large volume investors with its features. One of the main features is the resistance to slippage, which will be executed with locking in prices for the clients and traders. The second main feature will be the ability to easily exchange large volumes of crypto to fiat. Money can be optionally distribute via PayPal and E-Pay for USD exchanges, while Alipay, WeChat Pay and Union Pay will be available for CNT/RMB transfers.