Coinbase said Monday it’s opening its crypto prime brokerage to all institutional investors.
The suite of trading tools for professional investment firms already boasts a roster of 9,000 institutions (think hedge funds and family offices), according to data shared during Coinbase’s most recent earnings call.
Long assumed to be a bastion of retail crypto action, the Coinbase Prime launch should further cement the publicly traded exchange as a leading force in institutional crypto adoption. The company’s most recent shareholder letter said institutional trading accounted for 69% of Coinbase’s $462 billion in Q2 trading volume.
In a blog post Monday, Coinbase Vice President of Institutional Product Greg Tusar pointed to clients Meitu, MicroStrategy and One River for using the exchange’s “comprehensive platform to execute some of the largest trades in the industry.”
Elon Musk, PNC Bank, SpaceX, Tesla, Third Point LLC and WisdomTree Investments were also singled out as clients in a shareholder letter last month.
Coinbase’s prime brokerage offering stems from the acquisition of Tagomi in May 2020.
Read more: Behind ‘Prime Broker’ Buzzword Lies a Complex Strategy Game for Crypto Firms
Here’s a hype video explaining how Prime works:
