- Copper.co, a London-based custodian for digital assets, announced it has raised $8 million in Series A funding from investors like Target Global, MMC Ventures, and LocalGlobe
Copper.co, a London-based custodian for digital assets, announced it has raised $8 million in Series A funding from investors like Target Global, MMC Ventures, and LocalGlobe. With this round of funding, Copper will develop regional client-facing operations around the world such as North America and Asia. Even since Copper launched in 2018, the company has quickly grown its client base with crypto funds, institutions, and HNW private traders.
This round of funding follows a previous seed round which saw Copper raising $1.3 million in 2018 to build its custody and prime brokerage solutions and onboard institutional and HNW clients. Now Copper’s Walled Garden covers 96% of global crypto liquidity and is seeing over £500 million in transactions each month with that figure growing steadily.
Plus this funding round 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 called Nickel Digital Asset Management on its second fund Digital Gold Institutional. And Fidelity Digital Assets was selected as the prime custodian for the fund.
Copper designs and develops the infrastructure which enables institutions to acquire, store, and trade digital assets in a manner that satisfies global investors and regulatory standards. And its multi-signature safeguarding application allows institutions to have complete certainty that their capital is not at risk of theft — whether it be from hackers or bad players in the industry. And Copper is also one of the few digital asset custody solutions to be insured against crime, including theft of fiat or digital assets with a comprehensive policy brokered by Aon in London.
“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. Instead, they have built for an institutional framework that doesn’t exist yet, and is unlikely ever to, leaving institutions discouraged”, added Dmitry Tokarev, founder and CEO of Copper. “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.
Tokarev is the former CTO and Partner at Dolphin Wealth Management. And he founded Copper after witnessing the increased demand from institutions to enter the digital asset space but finding there were not any appropriate services to enable them to do so effectively and securely.
“We believe that the crypto market is lacking infrastructure enabling secure storage, seamless transfer and settlement of digital assets”, explained Mike Lobanov, General Partner at Target Global. “Unlike many startups in the crypto market, Copper is built for asset managers by asset managers themselves. Copper’s infrastructure provides institutions with traditional prime brokerage services for the crypto world. Being the first in the market, Copper’s Walled Garden allows secure and instant trades across different exchanges, which is a fundamental breakthrough in the market.”
MMC Ventures partner Oliver Richards pointed out that the venture firm was excited to back Dmitry and the Copper team as its first investment in this space.
“This team has achieved impressive progress to date driven by their deep understanding of the finance industry and their technology expertise. Institutional interest in digital assets is growing and we believe Copper offers a compelling and unique solution to firms looking to invest,” commented Richards.
Remus Brett pointed out that LocalGlobe has first-hand experience of the challenge of managing digital assets to the standards required of institutional investors since 2018.
“Whilst crypto is still far from a mainstream asset class, growth in global institutional demand is only going to increase. Copper’s founders’ deep understanding of its clients’ challenges, needs, and existing references provides a great platform for market leadership,” noted Brett.
