Bitget has teamed up with institutional digital asset prime broker Arkis to bring Direct Market Access (DMA) to Bitget through Arkis’s unified prime brokerage framework. The setup allows institutional clients to execute trades on Bitget while financing positions through Arkis and managing margin and risk at the portfolio level. The change is less about adding another trading connection and more about reshaping how centralized crypto liquidity is accessed within a prime-style credit structure.
Portfolio netting replaces isolated venue-by-venue margin
A persistent problem for institutional crypto desks has been fragmented collateral. Margin posted on one exchange usually cannot offset exposure held on another, leaving capital siloed and risk oversight harder to manage. Under this partnership, traders can move away from isolated margin requirements tied to each venue and operate under a portfolio-level margin model that nets exposure across exchanges supported within the Arkis framework.
Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said institutions want to deploy capital where it works hardest instead of managing fragmented margin across platforms. She said the Arkis integration gives institutional traders a more practical way to access Bitget while handling financing and risk at the portfolio level, in a structure that matches how professional desks actually operate.
Arkis’s model lets institutions borrow against a unified portfolio margin spanning Bitget and other supported venues. Positions executed on Bitget can be financed through Arkis’s credit infrastructure, while leverage and risk parameters remain centrally monitored. That separation between execution venue and credit provider mirrors a core feature of traditional prime brokerage.
DMA plus API workflows targets professional multi-venue trading
For institutional firms, DMA is core trading infrastructure. It gives clients direct access to exchange order books through APIs and sub-account structures, cutting manual steps and reducing latency. In this arrangement, institutions place orders directly on Bitget, while financing, collateral management and risk monitoring stay embedded inside Arkis’s brokerage layer. Arkis CEO Serhii Tyshchenko said trading firms need capital efficiency without giving up risk discipline, and that enabling DMA to Bitget within a unified margin framework allows positions to be financed holistically across venues while preserving the controls expected in professional trading environments.
The model is particularly relevant for market makers, proprietary trading firms and desks running multi-venue strategies. Basis trades, derivatives arbitrage, spread capture and multi-asset exposure management often depend on positions held across several platforms. If each venue requires fully separate collateral, the capital needed to maintain a strategy rises quickly. A unified margin system changes that by allowing offsetting exposures to be netted instead of fully collateralized exchange by exchange.
Better capital efficiency, but more weight on centralized risk control
Capital efficiency is the most obvious advantage. When balances spread across centralized exchanges, decentralized protocols and custodial providers can be coordinated through a unified credit model, idle collateral and operational friction may be reduced. Bitget describes itself as the world’s largest Universal Exchange, serving more than 125 million users and offering access to more than 2 million crypto tokens, along with tokenized stocks, ETFs, commodities, FX and precious metals. For Arkis clients, DMA access to Bitget adds another venue inside a consolidated credit environment.
There is also a trade-off. Once financing and margin are centralized, more risk sits at the prime brokerage layer, which raises the importance of real-time aggregation, mark-to-market pricing, exposure monitoring and stress testing. The source notes that unified credit structures bring counterparty concentration considerations, making Arkis’s credit evaluation, collateral management and stress-testing processes central to institutional confidence. Regulatory clarity may also shape adoption, as institutions continue to demand transparent governance and compliant credit structures.
For Bitget, the partnership strengthens its pitch to institutional traders. For Arkis, it expands venue coverage and reinforces its role as a unified prime brokerage provider. Portfolio margin, unified credit and DMA connectivity are now being assembled into one operating model, pushing crypto market structure closer to the standards long used in traditional finance.