Citadel Securities hired Polymarket's CTO, formerly of Citadel
The prediction markets space is one of the most exciting, fast-growing areas of financial technology, but opportunities to join the major firms are sparse. One senior engineer from hedge fund Citadel took an executive role at Polymarket, one of the industry leaders, earlier this year. This month, he returned home, with a catch.
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Mukilan Ashok spent the last four months as interim CTO of Polymarket US following the departure of Liam Kovatch (who's currently building Coinbase's prediction markets platform). He was previously head of electronic trading engineering for Credit at Citadel, but is now returning to the hedge fund's sister firm, Citadel Securities, to work on options market making. It's understood that Ashok's tenure at Polymarket was always going to be brief, as the firm prepared to appoint its permanent CTO, Kurush Dubash.
Dubash joined Polymarket when his Y Combinator startup, Dome, was acquired. The startup focused on creating APIs for prediction markets, allowing traders to analyze data across multiple platforms. His co-founder Kunal Roy joined as VP of engineering. The pair previously worked together at blockchain infrastructure firm Alchemy.
Being able to integrate tech across multiple prediction platforms will only become more important as competitors saturate the market. Robinhood, Crypto.com and Coinbase are the biggest incumbent fintechs building out their own platforms, but more may be coming; blockchain infrastructure firm Ripple hired ex-Barclays director Mark Davis to work on what he described as a "CFTC regulated prediction markets product." It's not clear whether this is another direct competitor, and Ripple did not respond to a request to comment on it.
Ashok won't be building another prediction market platform at Citadel Securities, but he will bring back knowledge that may impact its involvement in the space. At the moment, Citadel Securities, like most market makers, isn't publicly trading on Polymarket or Kalshi, but the firm's president, Jim Esposito, said in April that Citadel Securities is "absolutely keeping an eye on developments." Kalshi co-founder Luana Lopes Lara said earlier this year that just 5% of market making done on her platform is done by major institutional firms, with only Jump Trading and Susquehanna being publicly involved in prediction market making. That may soon change.
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