Copper.co, a UK-based custodian for digital assets, announced on Monday it has raised $8 million through its Series A funding round to grow globally by expanding its commercial team and launching new products. Institutional investors in this round include international investment firm Target Global, LocalGlobe, and MMC Ventures. This investment round follows a previous seed round attacted $1.3 million in 2018 to build its custody and prime brokerage solutions and onboard institutional and HNW clients.
Founded in 2018, Copper revealed it believes the cryptocurrency industry should be available and accessible to everyone, but a lack of reliable custody and execution services has left many institutional investors locked out of the market.
“Copper has developed a secure platform to facilitate investors who require dedicated account management and professional custody and execution services. With an easy to navigate interface, market making liquidity, and a team always ready to assist you, Copper will change the way you look at crypto.”
Speaking about the company’s progress, Dmitry Tokarev, Founder and CEO of Copper, stated:
“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”, said “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. 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.”
Mike Lobanov, General Partner at Target Global, went on to add:
“We believe that the crypto market is lacking infrastructure enabling secure storage, seamless transfer and settlement of digital assets. 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.”
Copper will use the funds to develop regional client facing operations in key geographies around the world such as North America and Asia. It will also accelerate the launch of new products that give their institutional clients more investment options. Since launch in 2018, Copper has quickly grown its client base with crypto funds, institutions and HNW private traders.