A unit of the Japanese financial conglomerate SBI Holdings has agreed to buy a minority stake in the London-based cryptocurrency market maker B2C2 for $30 million.

SBI Financial Services and B2C2 also announced a partnership, where the Japanese investing giant will use B2C2’s liquidity to support its clients trading cryptocurrencies, while B2C2 will use SBI’s resources to launch a full prime brokerage for both crypto and other asset classes.

Prime brokers provide services to active trading firms, including custody, execution, and consulting. The addition of prime brokerage services to the cryptocurrency space could help lure institutional investors from the sidelines. According to Max Boonen, B2C2’s founder,  typical prime brokerage services like clearing and financing are underdeveloped in the crypto space.

Boonen added, however, B2C2 is looking beyond crypto:

“We don’t want to limit ourselves to crypto. Crypto is the thing we do because that was how we started,… we’re keeping our eyes on the prize which is that the [prime brokerage] market is a 20 billion annual revenue market.”

B2C2 currently provides liquidity to banks, hedge funds and exchanges, and is best known for helping large investors execute multi-million dollar trades over-the-counter. It has a license to operate in Japan, one of the world’s most developed cryptocurrency markets.

In B2C2’s statement Yoshitaka Kitao, President and CEO of SBI Holdings, said that the Japanese financial giant would work to develop innovative new cryptocurrency products.

Source: https://www.cryptocompare.com/email-updates/daily/2020/jul/01/