Why Crossover is expanding into the US

Crossover’s CEO discusses institutional interest and how over-the-counter (OTC) trading has picked up in crypto

article-image

fox_industry/Shutterstock and Adobe modified by Blockworks

share

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.


Crossover’s officially expanding to the United States. 

I spoke to CEO Brandon Mulvihill about the move, institutional interest, and the rise of over-the-counter (OTC) trading. 

It’s probably already pretty obvious that this change is happening because of the shifting environment in the United States. Mulvihill told me it’s the perfect time for the team to enter the US markets — because it’s obviously a more favorable regulatory environment, but also because it looks like institutional interest is really picking up. 

“Almost the day after the election, the US institutions were calling us immediately,” he told me. Mulvihill and his other cofounders started their careers in TradFi, so they’re pretty familiar with both crypto and the more, well, traditional side of finance. 

And, with CrossX — its electronic communications network — Crossover does stand out as over-the-counter (OTC) trading picks up in crypto. 

“One of the big drivers we see internationally is that people are getting out of — especially the crypto-native market makers and…quant hedge fund — they’re moving away from the on-exchange world into OTC trading, which should not be surprising, because if we look at the foreign exchange market, the same thing happened,” he said. Crossover is also the “largest OTC destination cleared by Hidden Road.”

He noted that even banks, which Mulvihill expects to be one of the “slowest financial institutions to the market” are already making headway, with the JPMorgan announcement about JPMD and stablecoin progress by the likes of Bank of America.

“They are all aggressively, from what we see, building out or finally finalizing battle plans,” he said, reiterating that he still thinks there’ll be a “little bit of time before [banks] come in.”

Add to that the regulatory changes on the horizon. Mulvihill told me that the Crossover team has offered comments on the market structure bill, which is still working its way through DC. He told me he’s heard that it could come between August to the end of the year, though he was cautious to actually predict a timeline. 

But the bill itself “changes the game,” he said, calling it “the most positive thing that, I think, has happened in crypto since the ETFs were launched.”

“As a result, what we’re going to see are mainstream, blue-chip financial institutions coming in waves. I think we’re going to see M&A explode. I think we’re going to see investment explode. I think you’re going to see a real explosion of new customers into the space as a result of this bill.”

And this just reiterates the market potential for Crossover.

“We just fundamentally don’t believe that the institutional market can grow orders of magnitude in its current market structure form,” Mulvihill noted. Instead, it’ll evolve from here. Just like crypto has pushed TradFi to evolve, which is perhaps why Crossover is striking while the iron is heating up and moving into the US. 


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template (10).png

Research

Innovations on Aptos’ technical design through Raptr, Shardines, and Zaptos approach near-optimal latency and throughput by unlocking 100% utilization of network resources, with the capacity to settle 260k transactions per second with latencies less than 800ms. The original Move language was revamped with the launch of Move 2, supporting more expressivity in smart contract logic and a scalable ability to interact with high volume datasets. The ecosystem has benefitted from strong asset inflows, now hosting over $1.3B in stablecoins, $450M in bridged BTC, and $530M in RWAs. Activity in the Aptos ecosystem has grown notably over the past year, with monthly application revenue reaching ~$835k and monthly DEX volumes growing to over $5B, both at new all time highs.

article-image

Cryptocurrency and stock traders alike had a lot to unpack Wednesday

article-image

The government says Storm was a money-hungry aid to criminals; the defense says it’s not his fault that people used his code for illicit activities.

article-image

EigenLayer, Lido and Taiko are buying verifiable compute

article-image

Sam Altman sees our future through the World Orb

article-image

Few US politicians are this clearheaded about Bitcoin

article-image

Pump.fun seemed to kick off buybacks on Tuesday according to onchain analysis