The strategic partnership will enable SBI to provide crypto trading services to its customers and give B2C2 access to SBI’s resources
Crypto market maker B2C2 announced today that Japanese financial services giant, SBI, has agreed to take a minority stake worth $30 million in the crypto liquidity provider.
The investment marks the beginning of a strategic partnership between one of the largest financial firms to have made progress in the crypto market, and a veteran digital assets trading firm.
The partnership is also the latest example of institutionally-focused crypto players joining hands with established financial institutions to meet the complex needs of their clients. The deal will enable B2C2 to become SBI’s main liquidity provider, as the Tokyo-based financial service provider expands its crypto offerings.
B2C2 will also have access to SBI’s distribution network and financial resources as it plans to launch an electronic prime brokerage on its platform. SBI has also agreed to give access to its account books along with the investment.
“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,” Yoshitaka Kitao, President and CEO of SBI Holdings said. “We will work to develop innovative new crypto products and deepen synergies across our group of companies” the President added.
B2C2’s liquidity will help SBI enable its millions of clients to trade cryptocurrencies and B2C2 will benefit from SBI’s access to resources to launch its full prime brokerage for both crypto and other asset classes, explained Max Boonen, Founder of B2C2.
The trend of increasing institutional interest in virtual currency enables new companies to enter the market while existing companies can continue to benefit from their hold.
Speaking about the strategic partnership, Boonen said “Today’s deal with SBI takes B2C2 a big step forward. Having claimed the top spot in our segment thanks to the technological edge of our single dealer platform, we found in SBI the right partner to unlock the next drivers of our growth.”
“B2C2 will benefit from SBI’s balance sheet, which is far larger than anything committed to the crypto market to date,” he said. “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,” he added.
