SBI Financial Services, a subsidiary of financial services firm SBI Holdings, agreed on Wednesday to invest $30m in UK-based crypto trading firm B2C2 in connection with a strategic partnership agreement.
Founded in 2015, B2C2 conducts cryptocurrency trades on behalf of institutional investors such as banks, brokers, asset managers, hedge funds and family offices.
The partnership will involve the company leveraging SBI’s capital as well as its distribution network. It created a single dealer platform for the crypto trading market in 2016 and that platform will form the basis for an electronic prime brokerage it intends to release soon.
B2C2 aims to grow into a cross-asset prime brokerage and will shortly launch an automated two-way trading facility. It has identified venture capital firm Wicklow Capital and an undisclosed US-based asset manager as investors but has not disclosed details of earlier funding.
Yoshitaka Kitao, president and chief executive of SBI Holdings, said: “We expect a lot of synergies with B2C2, a firm which has a large number of clients globally and offers abundant liquidity, excellent price competitiveness and a diverse suite of products for their customers.
“We will work to develop innovative new crypto products and deepen synergies across our group of companies.”
Max Boonen, founder and director of B2C2, added: “B2C2 will benefit from SBI’s balance sheet, which is far larger than anything committed to the crypto market to date.
“It will complement our asset liability management framework – the most sophisticated in the market – to deliver an execution platform that will not only be a game changer in crypto, but also positions us to expand across asset classes as we set our sights on the $20bn-a-year prime brokerage market.”
