United Traders Exchange (UTEX) creates a nearly perfect cryptocurrency exchange

In 2009, three young, yet experienced traders from Russia joined forces and set up United Traders, an investment and finance firm with a strong focus on the U.S. stock market. But in 2020, the company turned a new page in its history by launching the United Traders Exchange (UTEX).

From prop trading to investment platform

At the beginning of its journey, United Traders was a prop trading firm, which wasn’t a surprise because its founders had been with pro-trading firms before. Gradually, the United Traders team expanded. The company eschewed a stifling corporate culture and hierarchy and instead encouraged personal initiative and out-of-the-box solutions. The loose and self-driven culture constantly attracts mostly young and talented professionals to United Traders.

The main business of United Traders was to trade in stocks and futures on U.S. stock markets (NYSE, NASDAQ, CME). The company’s founders generously shared their experience and knowledge with new traders. A unique talent recruitment system was set up – through public competitions for traders, and for several years anyone could access rigorous training. Just a few years into its operation, the United Traders team demonstrated a high level of skills and became the recipient of the prestigious Moscow Exchange award in the category “Best Private Investor” for two years in a row (2011, 2012).

The founders of United Traders are quite well known in the traders community. Many of them successfully share their work experiences on social media. One of the founders, Anatoly Radchenko, started his blog on YouTube in 2011, and trader Anton Klevtsov has racked up over 100 thousand subscribers on his YouTube channel.

Unlike similar trading companies, United Traders focused on software development. Two years after its inception, the company released Arche trading terminal that soon replaced Aurora terminal. For a long time Aurora enjoyed great popularity among thousands of traders from the CIS, and it still runs now.

In 2013, United Traders began offering an asset management service by registering Kvadrat Black hedge fund with the minimum entry threshold for customers being $100,000. The fund’s auditor was KPMG and the administrator was Trinity Fund Administration. The fund was serviced by Deutsche Bank and listed on Bloomberg. The fund’s assets were managed using algorithmic strategies, which allowed us to rule out the human factor. Despite the high profitability, the fund was closed in 2016 due to high administrative costs.

United Traders decided to take a different approach to asset management by combining its extensive knowledge of trading and software development in an in-house built investment platform. The users of the platform, in addition to buying shares and ETFs, would be able to invest in U.S. top companies before they go public – at IPO or even before the start of this process. Moreover, the entry threshold level for such investments is very low – just $50. So far, no other Eastern European company has ever offered such a service.

Two years of hard work 

United Traders’ mission is to facilitate prudent democratization of finance and give customers an opportunity to invest in the most attractive instruments. So it’s no surprise that the company is watching very closely the revolution that is happening around cryptocurrencies.

We at United Traders are still convinced that cryptocurrencies are the future of finance and want to be part of it. In the end we decided to create a cryptocurrency trading exchange. It took us almost two years to finish the development and several months to complete beta testing. Finally, in March this year UTEX became available to external users.

When developing UTEX, the United Traders team was strongly guided by user requests and its extensive experience in trading cryptocurrencies.

For pros and novices alike

We made the interface’s design our biggest priority to deliver an easy-to-use and simple, yet functional interface. United Traders primarily wanted to make cryptocurrency trading a very user-friendly experience for beginners, what the majority of exchanges can’t do for users.

We wanted to make the process of embarking on trading in cryptocurrencies for novices an easier ride, so we designed a “simple” interface. It is no-frills, without professional elements such as tape or DOM, which are unclear to beginner traders. However, it has everything you need to make a transaction: a chart, assets’ current prices and the buttons for buying and selling at market prices.

All extra instruments can be accessed in the professional version of the trading interface. You can easily switch between the two versions – just click at the button on the trading screen.

UTEX team added a feature made to protect the price from breakout. If a user places a large order that can’t be executed because of lack of offers at the specified price, the user will have only part of his order executed (the maximum deviation of price from the specified one is only 0.1%), the remainder will be returned to his account. At other trading exchanges, in theory, an order can be executed at a price much higher than the stated one.

The development team is also working hard on the stability of the trading system. We try hard to speed up transactions and make order execution error-free. Now UTEX has Market and Limit orders, but in the near future we will add more of them. 

The advantages of a legal crypto exchange

UTEX’s administration fully complies with KYC/AML requirements for all clients under the EU laws. The KYC system is automated and is easy to pass. The procedure consists of 4 levels each regulating deposit limits.

The minimum level that allows you to deposit up to 1,000 Euro into your account a month requires only the email and name – this is the data a user enters during registration. 

The compliance with the law allowed us to enable the option of depositing a dollar account with a card since today fiat accounts as a service are adopted by any crypto exchange.

We also deployed an anti-fraud system in UTEX. These third-party services check all users’ funds for purity and suspicious (fraudulent) activities. This applies to deposits and withdrawals of both crypto and fiat currencies (as well as fighting the so-called carding).

Other improvements

• Now UTEX users can get a 50% discount for their trading commission if they pay with tokens of our exchange (UTT). The standard commission fee is 0.2% and only 0.1% – when you pay with UTT tokens. To pay trading fees with tokens, you need to have sufficient UTT in your account and have this option enabled in the UTEX trading interface.

• A study into our users’ needs showed high demand for a mobile application. So just a while ago we released UTEX app for iOS users, it is available in App Store. The mobile app lets you carry the crypto exchange in your pocket and trade in cryptocurrencies anywhere.

• We launched a cryptocurrency margin trading in Aurora at the testing stage for professionals. Aurora allows you to take trading positions on cryptocurrency with 3X leverage. All transactions are subject to a standard exchange fee of 0.2%. UTEX provides liquidity for trading. To limit losses in your deposit, Aurora uses a Stop Loss parameter whose maximum value is 70% of the current balance in the account.

• Every UTEX trader can join the Affiliates program. Go to the Affiliates section on the United Traders website and generate a unique link to UTEX crypto exchange. Every affiliate person you bring to the service will generate you 30% off their trading fees on a regular basis.

UTEX is one of the few cryptocurrency exchanges set up by a team from Eastern Europe. Today users from all over the world trade using the platform: from CIS, Europe, Africa, Middle East and even Latin America. In less than six months after the launch, the product team succeeded in releasing several new services and large improvements at once. But we are only at the beginning of an exciting journey.