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Citadel Securities has invested $400 million in Crypto.com at a $20 billion valuation, marking the crypto exchange's first-ever institutional funding round and the latest sign of Wall Street's deepening embrace of digital assets.
Announced Thursday, the deal hands the market maker founded by billionaire Ken Griffin a stake in the Singapore-based exchange, which said the money will speed its expansion into "all asset classes, including tokenized securities and derivatives." Founded in 2016, Crypto.com had never taken on institutional capital before.
"The size of the opportunity in front of us is staggering, as crypto increasingly becomes the rails for finance," said Kris Marszalek, Crypto.com's co-founder and CEO, framing the investment as pushing the industry into "a new era of institutionalization."
The deal is the latest in a run of traditional finance firms staking out positions in crypto infrastructure. Citadel Securities itself put $200 million into rival exchange Kraken last November, alongside market-making competitor Jane Street. Intercontinental Exchange, which owns the New York Stock Exchange, has taken a stake in OKX, while Nasdaq invested $50 million in Gemini.
"The convergence of traditional financial markets and digital asset infrastructure is an exciting evolution," said Citadel Securities President Jim Esposito, pointing to its potential to improve market efficiency.
Both firms cast the tie-up around tokenized securities and derivatives—the effort to move stocks, bonds and other assets onto blockchain rails and trade them around the clock. Pure-play crypto firms have been blurring into full-service financial platforms from the other direction, too, with Coinbase adding stock trading for U.S. users in February.
Crypto.com ranks 11th among exchanges by trading volume, according to CoinMarketCap, and offers crypto, stocks and prediction markets to retail traders. In February, it won conditional approval for a U.S. national trust bank charter.
After Donating $35 Million to Trump PAC, Crypto.com Scores Wins From Regulators
The exchange has built close ties to the Trump administration. It is a business partner and investor in Trump Media & Technology Group, has donated millions to a political committee backing the president, and saw its affiliated CRO token used to pay $1 million in bonuses to winners of a UFC bout staged on the White House lawn.
Citadel's bet lands even as crypto prices sag: Bitcoin is down 28% this year and the broader crypto market sits at around $2.2 trillion, according to CoinGecko data.
