London-Based Crypto Custodian Copper Raises $8M for Expansion Overseas

Crypto custody provider Copper has raised $8 million in a Series A round - an investment it plans to use launching in new markets.

"Copper was always designed to be a global offering", said Copper founder and CEO Dmitry Tokarev, who was formerly CTO at Dolphin Wealth Management, a U.K.-based asset manager.

Copper has also planned on establishing an office in Hong Kong, although the coronavirus outbreak has stalled the effort, with a final judgment to be made sometime at the end of Q1.New products include a margining facility as well as tri-party repos, a type of contract that provides financial services to traders involved in borrowing funds by selling assets.

Having launched in 2018, Copper offers multi-signature custody and prime brokerage - services for institutional trading - to its clients, which include various funds, financial institutions, and high-net-worth private traders.

Copper raised $1.3 million in a seed round in 2018 to build out its prime brokerage and custodian solution.

Describing the Walled Garden solution as a "Fundamental breakthrough in the market", Mike Lobanov, general partner at Target Global, said Copper was providing "Institutions with traditional prime brokerage services for the crypto world."

Last September, Copper reported it had processed $500 million in aggregated trading volume in the three months since the launch of its solution in June.

500 million was now Copper's trading volume on a monthly basis, Tokarev told CoinDesk.

Copper currently onboards an average of two to three funds every week and currently has about 30 active clients on the platform, according to Tokarev.

In mid-January, the custodian was selected to provide prime brokerage services for a fund created by private London investment house Nickel Digital Asset Management.