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About Caladan
Caladan is a digital asset market-making and trading firm headquartered in Singapore, quoting on more than 65 centralised and decentralised venues since 2017 for token projects, exchanges and institutions. The pain point it addresses is liquidity scattered across exchanges, on-chain protocols, regional venues and OTC desks, where no single order book reflects true depth. Its approach connects interfaces to more than 20 on-chain protocols and over 47 centralised venues plus bilateral counterparties, aggregates quotes and depth into one price stream, and delivers it through market-making algorithms, OTC block execution and structured options, with annual volume on the order of $170 billion.
This aggregated capability was later packaged as API Liquidity, streaming two-sided spot and perpetual quotes on more than 100 tokens to institutions over FIX 4.2, 4.4 and 5.0 and RFQ, settling through Hidden Road, BitGo and Customers Bank CUBIX. Alongside the API it also provides listing-stage market making, structured options and investment activity for token projects, so clients receive one aggregated price stream rather than a single exchange order book.
On October 14, 2026 Caladan said its Cayman entity CLDN Cayman Ltd was registered as a Registered Person under the Securities Investment Business Act, effective October 7, giving its institutional derivatives business and planned tokenised RWA market making a regulatory base; it noted that no group company holds a Monetary Authority of Singapore licence.
Caladan's API launched on May 20, 2026, offering institutional counterparties executable streaming prices and RFQ liquidity across spot and perpetuals on more than 100 assets; the firm says it handles over 170 billion dollars of annual volume across more than 1,000 assets and employs about 119 people in Asia, Europe and North America.
Caladan will use the Cayman entity for institutional derivatives, assess liquidity provision for tokenised RWAs inside the securities framework, and make the API the main distribution channel.
John Gu — Co-founder & CEO; Master's in Computer Science and dual bachelor's degrees from MIT; previously in high-frequency trading at Tower Research, Citadel and Alpha Simplex; founded Caladan in 2017.
Michal Krasnodebski — Co-founder; dual degrees in finance and engineering from Wharton and UPenn; former general manager of Shutterstock's largest subsidiary.
Julia Zhou — President; bachelor's in economics and political science from UPenn; leads HR, legal, finance and external engagement.
Nigel Young — Managing Director & CTO; leads technology and trading operations; previously at Citadel and J.P. Morgan.
In Sep 2026, Caladan's Dubai entity CLDN Broker Dealer FZE won in-principle approval from Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) for broker-dealer services. In Oct 2026, CLDN Cayman Ltd was registered by the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority under the Securities Investment Business Act.