I am not as familiar with the crypto trading industry but I did work in equity markets for a number of years and for a while on short term, high volume strategies. I still have a hard time trusting any article that uses Flash Boys. I still find that book to be one of the worst representations of the electronic markets. It paints this evil picture similar to a chemtrails kind of conspiracy where a single entity is causing harm. In reality it is a complex organism where each entity is try to gain an advantage.<p>Since a lot of comments are talking about the equity markets I figured I would add my thoughts.<p>There is definitely a need for regulation. No we don't need to get rid of electronic trading, frontrunners or algs but we do need to pay attention to whats happening. I remember that window of time where the NASDAQ was selling order information subseconds before it happened. This is bad. Or the exchange (forgot which one) that was creating special order types for just big clients that were unpublished, this is also illegal and was stopped.<p>I love frontrunning. People seem to forget the era pre computer market making where there was a guy that made the market for a specific stock. Or how slowly information traveled. People on the floor would know the moment something happened and be able to trade on it right away compared to everyone else. We had dollar size spreads. Today we have penny or even sub-penny level spreads. Sure someone is making money off of me when I make a tread, but their margin is A LOT less than what it once was. Is someone manipulating my order...probably not, I am too small of a fry. Is someone manipulating Vanguards orders, people are probably trying but I suspect based on literature that firms like Vanguard have put out...they overall like it, cost of trades are drastically lower than historically.<p>TLDR if someone has a way to trade across markets faster than the rest...thats great, they are serving a useful job in making prices across markets even and if they are doing it well they are earning their money for the risk and cost associated with it.<p>Edit: I highly recommend the book Dark Pools. Its a much more unbiased book about electronic markets and how they came to be. I feel that it paints a much more realistic picture compared to Lewis' hype.