Bullish: Institutional OTC Trade Builder
Services
Product Strategy
Brand Experience
Client
Bullish: Institutional OTC Trade Builder
My Role
Product Designer Lead
Year
2025
Core Competencies
FinTech Strategy
Institutional UX
Trading Systems
Compliance & Risk Frameworks
Key Objective
To build a bespoke "request-for-quote" (RFQ) and trade-building environment that allows institutional counterparties to execute large-block orders with minimal slippage and maximum privacy.
The delivery
Strategic UX Audit & Revamp
Integrated Brand & Style Guide
Content & Go-To-Market Strategy
THE IMPACT
Institutional Scaling
Rapid Adoption
Proven Reliability
Challenge
How might we empower pro-traders to execute high-volume OTC trades seamlessly while maintaining exchange-grade compliance and risk controls?
Design Process
Architecting a high-throughput negotiation and execution engine for institutional-scale digital asset transactions.
Market Intelligence & Domain Discovery:
Decoupling institutional OTC mechanics from retail RFQ flows.
Benchmarked market leaders (Deribit, Binance) and evaluated OTC vs. RFQ trading dynamics to bridge usability gaps for professional crypto traders. Translated complex institutional trading requirements—spanning live match blotters, position management, and trade leg execution—into a strategic feature brief.
Ecosystem Architecture & Structural Exploration
Structuring trade-builder flows through high-impact wireframing.
Mapped end-to-end ecosystem order flows and conducted wireframe explorations comparing a "Partial Reveal" progressive disclosure model against a "Parallel Design" multi-leg view. Facilitated trade-off alignment across business and engineering leaders to select a final structure optimized for low-friction trade construction.
High-Density UI & Extreme-Case Stress Testing
Designing responsive interfaces and solving edge-case data overload.
Engineered multi-platform layouts (Desktop, Tablet, Mobile) leveraging existing Bullish design tokens for UI consistency. Stress-tested extreme interface constraints—such as data-dense rows, action button overload, and limited mobile viewports—by introducing space-saving micro-interactions and touch gestures.
Agile Governance & Scalable Product Roadmap
Supporting phased engineering delivery and strategy-driven expansion.
Collaborated within an agile framework to deliver modular, developer-ready component flows across sprint cycles. Created adaptable future-state designs (including strategy-based trade additions) to accelerate development handoff and ensure day-one platform adoption.
Solution
Strategic UX Flow:
End-to-end negotiation-to-settlement journey for complex OTC products.
Pro-Trader Interface (Responsive):
A high-density, low-latency UI optimized for rapid decision-making.
System Validation:
Collaborative refinement of business and technical requirements with institutional stakeholders to ensure SOC2 and regulatory alignment.
Impact
Institutional Scaling:
Supported a platform that reached $244.8 billion in annual digital asset sales (FY 2025), catering specifically to institutional-grade trading requirements.
Rapid Adoption:
Supported a product environment that enabled Bullish to become a Top 5 global venue by BTC volume and the #2 exchange for BTC options open interest ($4B as of Jan 2026).
Proven Reliability:
Designed for a platform trusted by the world's largest liquidity providers (e.g., B2C2), facilitating seamless 24/7/365 institutional execution.
