Barclays Might Invest In Crypto Custodian Company Copper

Barclays might invest in crypto custodian company Copper which is raising funds and expected to finalize it in the next few days so let’s have a closer look at today’s latest cryptocurrency news

The UK-based multinational private bank Barclays might invest millions of dollars in the crypto custody company Copper. Copper is raising fresh funds and Barclays is among the few backers that will put their money in the latest financing round. Founded by Dmitry Tokarev in 2018, Copper provides prime broking, custody, and settlement services to institutional investors. The company also developed a proprietary trading technology ClearLopp which connects exchanges and offers offline storage of funds while the trades are executed.

The London-based company secured $75 million in a Series B funding round last year and the billionaire alan Howard led a $25 million extension to the raise. The company drew several big names as well like Dawn Capital, MMC Ventures, and LocalGlobe. Additionally, Copper hired Lord Philip Hammond who was actually a UK Chancellor of the Exchequer under Prime Minister Theresa May as a senior advisor. Last November, the company sought a $500 million Series C raise that put the valuation at $3 billion with SoftBank, Tiger Global, and Accel being among the participants.

The 2022 bear market made Copper scale the figures and is yet to receive approval from the UK FCA which required digital asset service providers to apply for registration in order to continue with operations but it also got regulatory approval in Switzerland back in May. Barclays was the first UK-based bank to support crypto in 2015 when it started accepting BTC for charity donations.

The bank partnered with Circle in 2016 to launch a social payment app that allows investors to convert pounds into BTC before launching a new venture branch that focuses on areas like distributed ledgers, smart contracts, and AI. Last year, after the UK FCA crackdown on Binance, Barclays told customers it was blocking them from sending funds to the world’s biggest exchange.

As recently reported, Barclays and Goldman Sachs joined a $70 million Series A funding round for the institutional crypto trading platform Elwood Technologies which was founded by hedge fund manager Alan Howard. Joining the round were Commerzbank, Galaxy Digital, and Dawn Capital and the fundraising round valued the company at $500 million as per the reports.