Mr. Betts has previously headed the development of electronic trading platforms at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and UBS

“There is a lot of demand” for digital currency trading from institutions, he said, noting that his early conversations with investors involved a lot of “What is bitcoin?” questions, whereas now he hears, “Bitcoin is interesting, but where can we trade?’” He added, “A lot of them just couldn’t do business with the existing exchanges. But we are a team of investment veterans. We speak their language.”