Coopetition: The Competitive Collaboration That Drives Market Evolution

By Alan Konevsky, CEO, tZERO Group, Inc.

In the early days of electronic trading in foreign exchange (FX), something remarkable happened: fierce competitors realized they couldn’t digitize a global, fragmented market alone. What emerged was coopetition – a deliberate collaboration among competitors to establish the common rails, standards, and trust necessary for electronic trading to scale.

That dynamic – rivals working together for the good of the market – was instrumental in transforming FX from a voice-brokered, opaque environment into a near-fully electronic one. And it offers valuable lessons for the next phase of financial market evolution: the shift toward tokenization and regulated digital infrastructure.

Lessons from eFX: Shared Infrastructure, Competitive Innovation

In the 1990s and early 2000s, banks, technology providers, and trading venues realized that no single participant could build electronic FX in isolation. Shared protocols such as FIX, market data standards, and post-trade connectivity were developed collaboratively – even as firms competed aggressively on pricing, liquidity, and customer relationships.

The result was an ecosystem that balanced competition and cooperation:

• Common standards accelerated adoption and interoperability
• Shared infrastructure reduced friction and cost for all participants
• Healthy rivalry spurred innovation at the product and execution level

Coopetition didn’t diminish competition – it raised the bar for everyone.

FX: The Original Decentralized Marketplace

Long before blockchain or DeFi, FX was – and is – the world’s first truly decentralized marketplace. There is no central exchange, no single clearinghouse – just a network of participants trading across time zones and jurisdictions, bound by mutual trust and evolving standards. Its resilience and efficiency stem precisely from that decentralized design. In many ways, DeFi is revisiting this principle – creating permissionless, networked environments where liquidity, transparency, and innovation emerge from collaboration rather than control. The FX market’s success shows that decentralization, when combined with structure and integrity, can support global scale.

The Tokenization Parallel

We’re at a similar inflection point today in digital assets and tokenized markets. Financial institutions, fintechs, and infrastructure providers recognize that distributed ledger technology (DLT) has the potential to reshape capital formation, trading, and settlement. But progress requires a foundational layer of trust, regulation, and interoperability that no single firm can deliver alone.

That’s why cooperation – among regulated venues, custodians, identity providers, and blockchain networks – is essential. Shared frameworks for identity, cross-venue liquidity mechanisms, and common regulatory architectures can unlock scalability for tokenized markets just as FIX and electronic execution standards did for FX.

Competing Through Collaboration

At tZERO, we believe the future of digital finance depends on the same cooperative mindset that built eFX. We’re already seeing it in action: partnerships that link regulated broker-dealers with DeFi infrastructure, identity and custody networks that interoperate across chains, and technology collaborations that make issuance and secondary trading more seamless.

In these emerging ecosystems, the goal isn’t to dominate the rails – it’s to build them right. When competitors align around integrity, compliance, and shared infrastructure, they create a foundation where innovation and competition can thrive sustainably.

From eFX to On-Chain Markets: History Doesn’t Repeat, But It Rhymes

The FX market’s electronic transformation didn’t happen because one platform “won”. It happened because the industry collectively decided to modernize, connect, and standardize. Today’s tokenization movement stands at the same crossroads.

If we get coopetition right – balancing collaboration on the essentials with competition on service, innovation, and user experience – we can accelerate the transition to a digital, inclusive, and efficient financial system.

The lesson from eFX is clear: markets evolve fastest when competitors recognize that building together can benefit all.