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UK-based crypto asset custodian Copper has announced that it has raised $8 million in a Series A round.
The round saw participation from a number of institutional investors including Target Global, LocalGlobe, and MMC Ventures. It follows a previous seed round in which Copper raised $1.3 million in 2018.
In its press release, the company said that it will use the latest funding to expand its commercial team and launch new products to give its institutional clients more investment options. It also intends to use the funds to develop regional client facing operations in key geographies around the world such as North America and Asia.
“This venture funding round is a real vote of confidence from investors. Their support will allow us to accelerate our scale up, hiring teams in key regions and introducing new products and services to better meet their needs,” said Dmitry Tokarev, Founder and CEO of Copper.
Founded in 2018, Copper develops digital asset infrastructure which enables institutions to acquire, store, and trade digital assets in a manner that satisfies global investors and regulatory standards. It has developed a secure platform to facilitate investors who require dedicated account management and professional custody and execution services.
In Nov. 2018, the company introduced Walled Garden – an infrastructure that enables funds to deploy capital across multiple exchanges, while maintaining independent custody.
Walled Garden is currently connected to the top 15 exchanges, including Binance, Bitfinex, BitMEX, Bitstamp, Bittrex, Coinbase Prime, Coinbase Pro, Coinflex, Deribit, HitBTC, Huobi, Kraken, LMAX, OKEx, and Poloniex. It now covers 96% of global crypto liquidity and is seeing over £500 million in transactions each month, Copper said.
“Copper was always designed to be a global offering. Since 2017, we have seen many crypto custody solutions emerge that don’t fully meet the needs of institutions,” said Tokarev. “Our Walled Garden and Prime Brokerage infrastructure truly looks after the security and trading needs of institutions, regardless of their investment strategies and goals. We are seeing volumes increase as our clients see the advantage of our prime brokerage solution, which allows them to make transactions across many trading venues securely and efficiently.”
The fundraise comes on the heels of Copper’s announcement that it will provide prime brokerage services for Europe’s leading UK-regulated institutional manager of digital assets, Nickel Digital Asset Management, on its second fund Digital Gold Institutional. Fidelity Digital Assets was selected as prime custodian for the fund.
