In the world of crypto trading, speed, and fees often determine who wins. Therefore, a new player is quietly redefining the equation, aiming to automate trading tools and alpha discovery. That player is VTrader, a next-gen, no-fee trading platform built around on-chain transparency and AI-powered intelligence. At the core is Steve Gregory, a former compliance officer and attorney who has scaled three major exchanges and helped secure full U.S. money transmission licensing (MTLs) in under a year at CEX.IO. Now, he's taking on one of the valuable crypto's profit centers: trading fees. "Between the spread and the exchange fee, you often lose around 5% just for showing up. This hurts the average return for customers." Gregory told Crypto Daily. "We believe a major shift is coming to the industry just as retail stock brokerages moved to zero-fee trading; crypto is heading the same way." VTrader operates on a fee-less trading model, instead earning yield from user deposits . This model allows the platform to avoid trading commissions while offering a transparent view of customer balances permanently verifiable on-chain. It's a pivot away from the closed, opaque custody models most exchanges still rely on. The vision is clear: build trust by default and let automation do the heavy lifting. AI Meets Alpha VTrader is doing more than cutting fees—embedding artificial intelligence directly into the trading stack. Its recent feature is a price prediction engine that forecasts the near-term movement of Bitcoin and Ethereum based on real-time data scraped from news, social sentiment, and technical indicators. Users can view how past predictions performed against actual market outcomes, giving the system an uncommon level of transparency for an AI-powered tool. Gregory explains, "The AI tool is meant to supplement the user's research and give users confidence when they place a trade." Perhaps most innovative is the platform's focus on what Gregory calls "narrative-based alpha." Unlike traditional equities, where fundamentals dominate, crypto often trades on hype, sentiment, and memes. VTrader's upcoming feature will track token popularity, momentum shifts, and sentiment swings across the crypto news cycle and then alert users when it detects actionable signals. It's a modular, plug-and-play approach to trading intelligence where traders don't just react to news; they're notified before the hits. Intent-Based DeFi Trading, Powered by AI The VTrader team is also exploring intent-based trading, where users create strategies based on values or themes like green energy or decentralized infrastructure and let AI execute those strategies with discipline. As trading automation becomes more accessible, some critics argue that AI-enhanced tools like VTrader give users an unfair advantage. Gregory disagrees, sharing that information asymmetry has always existed, but the point is to democratize access to better tools. VTrader is not here to hide alpha ; rather, it is working towards unlocking it. The platform is structured so that users can freely access performance data on the AI models, enabling a rare level of openness in an industry often criticized for its opacity. What Comes Next? While AI and predictive tools are central to VTrader's roadmap, Gregory argues that user experience is still the most significant barrier to mass adoption in crypto. "UX is the biggest challenge for crypto. New entrants aren't familiar with it and it looks too technical, so they don't trust it. We aim to make everything look simple on the surface while the complexity stays in the backend which is transparent but under the hood. We want users to feel at ease using our platform," he says. As traditional exchanges cling to outdated revenue models and siloed infrastructure, platforms like VTrader are betting that the future of trading is transparent, intelligent, and fee-free. By combining on-chain audibility, AI-powered prediction engines, and real-time narrative tools, VTrader isn't just building a trading platform; it's redefining what it means to have an edge in crypto. Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
