Crypto.com on Thursday announced a $400 million investment from Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities in its first-ever institutional funding round.
It valued the cryptocurrency exchange at $20 billion, nearly half of industry leader Coinbase’s $42 market cap.
The crypto platform said it expects the partnership to accelerate its expansion into all asset classes, including tokenized securities and derivatives, and bridge the gap between digital asset and traditional markets.
“The convergence of traditional financial markets and digital asset infrastructure is an exciting evolution with the potential to further improve market efficiency,” said Jim Esposito, president of Citadel.
The leading global market maker was founded by billionaire Griffin in 2002.
Traditional banks have recently ramped up their investments in crypto and stablecoin platforms, a sharp turnaround from initially shunning the emerging industry, as they look to take advantage of soaring demand, clearer regulatory guidance and the growing adoption of tokenized assets.
“The size of the opportunity in front of us is staggering, as crypto increasingly becomes the rails for finance,” said Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek, who co-founded the company a decade ago.
“Having built the right regulatory and tech infrastructure over the last decade, Crypto.com is now perfectly positioned to capture this new wave of growth across all asset classes.”
Meanwhile, crypto-only firms have broadened their own offerings.
Coinbase, for example, launched stock trading last year.
But cryptocurrency is still facing some big hurdles to widespread adoption, including intense price volatility; the hold-up of crypto-friendly bills like the Clarity Act in Congress; a lack of consumer protections; and concerns around security risks, including hackings.
Shocking reports about a wealthy crypto investor who was held hostage and tortured in a Manhattan townhouse for several weeks as attackers tried to extort his crypto passwords also shed a negative light on the industry.
Meanwhile, while Bitcoin soared as high as $126,000 last year, it has since fallen below $65,000 – down more than 26% so far this year.
The crypto sector is worth about $2.3 trillion, according to CoinGecko data.
With Post wires