New research, The Ex Files from Solidus Labs suggests that traditional execution benchmarks can mask significant cost disparities across venues, assets, trade sizes and trading sessions. In an interview with Traders Magazine, Asaf Meir, CEO of Solidus Labs, explains why conventional best-execution frameworks fall short in crypto markets, where institutions may be leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table through suboptimal routing decisions.
What is the single most important takeaway for institutional investors from this research?
Without the right tools to assess best execution in crypto’s unique market structure – you’re likely not getting the prices and fees you think you’re getting. We found a 6x spread difference between the best and worst broker-dealer on large BTC trades, a gap that is completely invisible in the pooled averages most institutional evaluation frameworks actually use. The number your desk is looking at might be technically accurate, but operationally blind. If you are routing significant volume through a broker-dealer without size-bucketed analysis, you do not know what you are actually paying in relation to the market.
Why do traditional execution benchmarks fail to capture the true cost of trading digital assets?
Traditional benchmarks were built around a consolidated tape and a single reference price – and as the SEC noted in its proposal to rescind rule 611 recently, that methodology is limited even with legacy assets. Digital Assets has neither, and price formation is uniquely nuanced, forming cross on and off-chain across dozens of different venues with different mechanisms. The deeper problem is not infrastructure, it is methodology. Even with perfect data, a pooled per-venue spread cannot detect cost variance that is conditional on size, session, day of week, and asset simultaneously. Our data shows a broker-dealer that looks like a 0.17 bps venue on a pooled basis reaching 6.17 bps on trades above $100K. It shows a 3-5x intraday spread ratio at the same venue depending on what time of day you execute. None of that appears in a standard report. The benchmark is answering the wrong question and calling it done.
How significant are the cost savings institutions could achieve by improving their routing decisions?
On a $1B annual book, the numbers are material and fully recoverable. Choosing the right broker-dealer on large BTC trades: $207K per year in avoidable spread. Routing large ETH to the right venue: $23K. Adjusting session timing for broker-dealer flow: $9K. Adjusting for weekend microstructure: $19K. Combined across those four practices: $259K per year. Add AMM routing on large BTC at even 5% allocation and that number jumps by another $325K. These are not theoretical savings. They are the gap between what was paid and what was available, measured across 89 days of continuous data. Every dollar of it is recoverable by identifying the routing pattern and updating the policy.
What do these findings mean for institutions preparing for a more regulated digital asset market?
First, it means that for institutions to uphold their standards from other asset classes and do right by their clients, they need tailored tools for a different market landscape. Solidus began offering execution quality solutions for digital assets in direct response to those institutions that want to make sure they offer the best execution quality in the same way they do in other asset classes. The second factor here is the regulatory direction, and it’s getting clearer by the day: The European framework MiCA – one of the earliest comprehensive regulatory frameworks – in Article 78 requires best execution across the EU. The SEC’s 2026 examination priorities explicitly name execution quality as a review focus – combined with SEC Chair Atkins’ proposal to rescind rule 611 for securities, signalling moving away from a reference-based trade-through requirement to more sophisticated multidimensional execution monitoring. US market structure legislation and regulation is also advancing, and will apply higher standards to crypto.
The bottom line is that the firms that will be well-positioned are not the ones scrambling to provide measure and understand pricing and best execution, or rushing to comply when an examiner arrives. They are the ones that have already built the tooling and capabilities, audit trail, the governance posture, and the measurement infrastructure. The framework to do that exists, with the right tooling and right methodologies. What this research shows is that the cost of not building it is quantifiable, and it compounds quietly inside every trade not measured and benchmarked correctly.
How should compliance and trading teams adapt as regulators place greater emphasis on execution quality?
Stop evaluating venues in isolation. A pooled headline spread is the wrong question. The right question is: what did this venue cost me on this asset, at this size, at this time of day – and how does that compare to what was available? That requires moving from single-axis benchmarks to conditional execution quality frameworks. But here’s the critical point: you cannot simply copy-paste a best execution framework from equities and apply it to digital asset markets. The market structure is fundamentally different – at least five venue types, no consolidated tape, no NBBO or clear benchmark, onchain and offchain simultaneously, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. You need a crypto-native approach, built from the ground up for the realities of how digital assets actually trade. The framework to build that exists. The methodology exists. The regulatory pressure to adopt it is no longer approaching – it’s arriving.
Three concrete things the data directly supports, and all require modern, crypto-native execution quality monitoring. First, replace pooled venue averages with size-bucketed analysis. The variance that matters only becomes visible when you break down execution cost by trade size. Second, build session-conditional routing logic. The cheapest venue at 3am UTC is not the cheapest venue at 3pm ET, and a static routing policy is a systematic, avoidable mistake. Third, treat assets and venues as a joint decision. The cross-venue ranking shifts materially between BTC and ETH, and a framework that evaluates venue quality without specifying the asset is answering a question that was not asked. Compliance and trading operations teams need to be asking their trading desks for all three dimensions, not just a headline spread number.
