Khody Azmoon is CEO and co-founder of BLOX Markets.
What were the key theme(s) for your business in 2025?
At BLOX Markets, we continue to develop Openpool, a new retail-focused U.S. equities trading venue. We’re building a trading venue to open up access to off-exchange equity retail flow through order competition.1 The concept of a retail-focused U.S. equities trading venue aligns well with the ongoing key theme that U.S. retail trading activity in 2025 exceeded 2024 levels and is poised to continue rising into 2026, particularly as expectations around U.S. interest rate cuts act as a key catalyst.
Another key theme for us is the growing strength of independent U.S. equities trading venues. In 2025, several new independent U.S. equities trading venues entered the market and many others successfully secured fresh funding (i.e. OneChronos, Bruce, Mosaic), reinforcing investor appetite for independent Alternative Trading Systems (ATS). Over the year, we were fortunate to raise capital from a group of fintech: capital market tech focused individual investors and venture funds. As we continue fundraising with step-up valuations targeted for early 2026, we’ve also been building our equity-rights program to onboard liquidity providers from day one when we launch hopefully later next year. We’ve spent considerable time refining the program with more than a dozen prospective participants, and we look forward to releasing the final framework early next year.
What was the highlight of 2025?
The SEC under Chair Paul Atkins confirmed its intention to proceed with the Regulation NMS reforms covering Tick Sizes, Access Fees, and Transparency of Better-Priced Orders, while deferring implementation of the Tick Sizes & Access fee provisions until November 2026. Somewhat counterintuitively, this timing benefits us, as our retail-focused U.S. equities trading venue is not yet ready to launch.
Fast forward to the Order Protection Rule (OPR) roundtables in Texas December of 2025: while a couple major exchanges continued to push for the elimination of access fees, the discussions made it clear that the majority of participants believed some form of access-fee framework would remain necessary under any potential OPR reforms.
What are your expectations for 2026?
While the SEC under Chair Paul Atkins is expected to release a proposal addressing Order Protection Rule (OPR) changes, any final rule that strips away provisions viewed as essential by market participants could face legal challenges. As a result, meaningful implementation may slip into the next administration, leaving the long-term outlook unclear.
Overnight U.S. equities trading continues to gain traction, but broader exchange participation may be deferred from 2026 into 2027. Several operational and market-structure questions remain unresolved, and many participants are wary of moving too quickly.
At the same time, the continued growth of notional-based equities trading is making a fractional equities trading venue increasingly viable, with progress in equity tokenization potentially unlocking a true fractional equities marketplace in the U.S.
What trend(s) are getting underway that people may not know about but will be important?
A few U.S. equities trading venues have begun reassessing their outsourced technology arrangements as renewal cycles approach. Rising technology costs, combined with expected compression in per-share dark pool economics, are increasing pressure on traditional ATS business models. We expect this dynamic to drive some ATS operators ultimately exiting the market over the next few years.
This environment creates a clear opportunity for firms with differentiated cost structures. By owning and operating our technology stack, we maintain a meaningful cost advantage, and several of our ATS models are designed to perform effectively under tighter pricing conditions. While our launch timeline remains flexible, we are targeting a launch later in 2026. See you then!
BLOX Markets trading venue Openpool is not yet operational and remains subject to regulatory filings and approvals.
