Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit will move its trading infrastructure from Singapore to Tokyo on November 12, introducing a lower-latency connectivity route reserved for higher-tier professional traders and market makers.
In a November 3 announcement, the exchange outlined two dedicated WebSocket connections for institutional trading. The standard connection, available to Pro 2 clients and above, operates across two Amazon Web Services availability zones. A faster, single-zone connection is restricted to clients holding Pro 3 or MM2 status or higher.
Bybit says the single-zone arrangement reduces network latency by keeping trading connections and private backend services in the same availability zone. It has not published measured latency improvements, execution-speed benchmarks or comparisons showing how the two routes perform under actual market conditions.
On paper, it is the same venue, just not the same route in.
Tokyo migration begins November 12
The connectivity changes accompany a broader relocation of Bybit’s latency-sensitive trading services from AWS Singapore to AWS Tokyo, scheduled to begin at 08:00 UTC on November 12.
Under the migration plan announced on October 29, Bybit will move its matching engines sequentially, beginning with options, followed by spot trading, inverse futures and linear futures.
The exchange intends to complete the migration without downtime and says existing API endpoints, request parameters and response fields will remain unchanged.
The relocation affects the infrastructure processing orders rather than simply establishing additional network access points. For algorithmic trading firms, the physical location of matching engines determines which hosting locations and network routes can minimize the time required to submit, modify and cancel orders.
That makes the change relevant to market makers operating automated strategies from colocated or geographically optimized servers. Systems currently configured around Singapore-based infrastructure may need to reassess their network placement once execution moves to Tokyo.
Other cryptocurrency exchanges have been reorganizing their execution infrastructure. DaveFinances recently examined Coinbase’s migration of global derivatives trading onto Deribit, which consolidated matching and liquidity infrastructure behind existing customer interfaces.
Bybit’s relocation has a different geographic and technical scope, with the additional feature of establishing distinct connectivity arrangements according to client eligibility.
Two WebSocket routes with different latency profiles
The standard Tokyo Market Maker WebSocket service, known as MMWS, routes connections across AWS availability zones apne1-az2 and apne1-az4.
Bybit’s new primary-ws connection instead directs sessions into apne1-az4, placing trading and private backend services within the same zone.
Removing cross-zone network travel can reduce the time taken for messages to reach trading services. The exchange explicitly describes primary-ws as offering better latency than standard MMWS, although it has not quantified the improvement.
Both connections support Bybit’s V5 WebSocket interfaces covering spot, futures and options, including trading, private-account and public market-data services. Standard and Simple Binary Encoding interfaces are included.
There is an important limitation to the initial rollout. Bybit says single-zone routing for public market-data endpoints, including /v5/public/* and /v5/public-sbe/*, will be introduced gradualy after the migration. Until that deployment is complete, market-data traffic on primary-ws may still traverse multiple availability zones.
The market-data side is a bit less tidy.
Consequently, the new route is not guaranteed to provide fully single-zone connectivity across every part of an automated strategy immediately after November 12. Private trading services and public market-data delivery may initially follow different network paths.
For market makers that continuously update quotes in response to order-book changes, overall responsiveness depends on both receiving market information and submitting the resulting orders.
The technical emphasis resembles developments elsewhere in institutional cryptocurrency infrastructure. In October, TP ICAP’s crypto exchange added direct liquidity connectivity through 4OTC, reducing integration work for market makers connecting their pricing systems to the venue.
Bybit is concentrating instead on the network distance between professional traders and its own execution infrastructure.
Access depends on trading volume and market-maker status
The eligibility rules establish three different levels of connectivity access.
Clients holding Pro 3 or MM2 status and above can apply for both primary-ws and standard MMWS. Pro 2 clients can apply for MMWS, but are not eligible for the dedicated single-zone connection under the published criteria.
Clients below Pro 2 can request a three-month trial of the cross-zone MMWS service only. They must reach Pro 2 by the end of that period to retain access.
Bybit will also continue quaterly trading-volume reviews. Clients remaining below Pro 2 for an extended period can lose all MMWS connectivity, including any primary-ws access previously granted.
Bybit’s published Pro program requirements illustrate the scale of trading activity associated with the higher tiers. For spot markets, Pro 2 requires at least $50 million in 30-day trading volume, compared with $100 million for Pro 3. The corresponding derivatives thresholds are $250 million and $750 million, respectively. The program also requires API trading to represent more than 20% of qualifying volume.
Separately, the exchange’s market-maker program uses liquidity-contribution measures. Spot MM2 qualification requires at least 0.1% of total market-maker spot volume, while the derivatives MM2 threshold is a weighted maker-volume share of at least 0.5%.
These are alternative routes to the higher connectivity tier rather than a single universal turnover requirement.
That is a large jump in turnover, and not a small one for a new market maker.
The arrangement adds connectivity quality to an incentive structure that already differentiates professional traders through fees and market-making rebates.
Bybit’s reliance on institutional liquidity providers extends beyond its conventional exchange products. Its recently introduced Bybit Odds contracts use institutional market-maker pricing, illustrating how professional liquidity provision also supports newer trading products.
Faster access for established market makers could improve their ability to maintain competitive quotes, but the disclosed rules do not establish that smaller participants will experience materially worse execution outcomes.
Latency advantages and availability remain unmeasured
The competitive implications depend on the size and consistency of the latency difference between the two connections.
Research published by the Bank for International Settlements on high-frequency trading races found that a relatively small number of firms captured a disproportionate share of speed-based trading opportunities in UK equity markets.
The researchers estimated that latency-arbitrage races accounted for more than 20% of trading volume in their sample, with the six most active firms responsible for more than 80% of race wins and losses.
Those findings concern equity markets, not Bybit’s cryptocurrency order books, and cannot be used to estimate the impact of its Tokyo connectivity changes. They do establish that small timing differences can have measurable competitive consequences in markets where automated participants react to common price signals.
But speed isn’t a single number, not across all of that.
Bybit has not disclosed the expected improvement in order-acknowledgment times, cancellation latency, message-delivery consistency or performance during periods of heavy trading activity.
The announcement also leaves the availablity characteristics of the new routes unspecified.
AWS availability zones are designed as independent infrastructure locations. Distributing services across multiple zones can improve resilience against failures affecting one location, while concentrating connections in a single zone can eliminate some network travel.
Bybit has not explained how primary-ws would respond to an apne1-az4 disruption, whether affected clients would automatically fail over to another connection or how quickly service could be restored through standard MMWS.
Eligible higher-tier participants can apply for both routes, giving them the possibility of maintaining alternative connections. The announcement does not establish whether failover between those routes is automatic or requires action by the client.
Nor does the single-zone design demonstrate inferior reliability by itself. That assessment would require information about redundancy, traffic management and recovery arrangements inside Bybit’s infrastructure.
For a meaningful performace comparison after the migration, professional traders would need measurements covering typical and tail latency, order acknowledgments, cancellation times, market-data freshness and connection stability under comparable trading conditions.
The announced architecture creates a measurable difference in connectivity eligibility, but its economic consequences remain unproven. Without a direct comparision of live execution results, there is no basis to quantify any advantage in fill rates, spreads or market-making profitability.
The actual figures are missing, and that leaves quite a lot unsaid.
Bybit’s November 12 migration will establish a tier-dependent network structure in which its largest professional participants can request a dedicated lower-latency route while smaller eligible firms use cross-zone connectivity. Whether that structure produces a meaningful competitive advantage will depend on performance and reliability data that the exchange has yet to provide.
Johan Shamshad is a financial markets writer at Dave Finances covering cryptocurrencies, trading platforms, brokers, fintech, financial regulation, and developments across global markets. He previously worked at Gulf News, adding newsroom experience to his coverage of fast-moving financial and digital-asset markets.
His work focuses on identifying market-moving events, company developments, regulatory changes, product launches, and shifts in trading and financial infrastructure.
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