The British bank Barclays, despite the crisis in the crypto industry, intends to invest in the custodial service Crypto Copper in the “range of millions of dollars.”
An international private bank headquartered in London is investing in a crypto service that stores $2 billion worth of cryptocurrencies as part of its latest funding round.
Barclays is one of the UK’s largest banks with total assets of around $1.4 trillion as of 2021. Until now, the extent of his involvement in the crypto industry has been the decision to ban customers from using bank cards for payments on the largest crypto exchange Binance.
Copper, founded by Dmitry Tokarev in 2018, provides depository, brokerage and settlement services to institutional investors. The company has developed and patented the ClearLoop technology, which provides offline storage of assets during transactions between crypto exchanges.
London-based Copper raised $75 million last June, including $25 million from billionaire investor Alan Howard. The company has attracted several other big names in the global venture capital market including LocalGlobe, Dawn Capital and MMC Ventures.
Copper has hired Lord Philip Hammond, who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer under former Prime Minister Theresa May from 2016 to 2019. In November last year, the company sought to raise another $500 million in investment, which should have boosted Copper’s market value to $3 billion. The participants in the round included Tiger Global, SoftBank Group and Accel.
However, Copper has not yet received approval to operate from the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The regulator requires digital asset service providers to apply for temporary registration in order to continue operations. But in May, the company received approval from the regulatory authorities in Switzerland.
In 2020, Copper announced its intention to connect institutional investors to the DeFi industry with a new tool – a bridge between Copper services and DeFi applications.
