Broker TP ICAP Is Launching a Cryptocurrency Trading Platform

U.K.-based broker TP ICAP is launching a cryptocurrency trading platform with Fidelity Investments and Standard Chartered’s digital assets custody unit, Zodia Custody, according to an announcement on June 29.

TP ICAP Is Launching a Crypto Trading Platform

TP ICAP Group is launching an institutional cryptocurrency trading platform, having offered Bitcoin futures trading services since 2019. The latest offering will be made in association with Fidelity Digital Assets and Zodia Custody, a unit of Standard Chartered.

Scheduled to be launched by the second half of the year, liquidity providers such as Flow Traders will be launched alongside the trading platform.

At present, crypto trading and settlement and custody services come under a single venue, which increases credit risks. Hence, the provision of liquidity services to the platform is necessary.

Remarking on the latest offering, Simon Forster, co-head of digital assets at TP ICAP, said:

“Many of our clients have been prevented from accessing cryptoasset markets due to current limitations in market infrastructure, with most execution venues requiring pre-funding and also acting as custodian. This poses challenges from a conflict of interest perspective and results in fragmented liquidity.”

Standard Chartered Expands Into Crypto Offerings

As for Standard Chartered, this is the firm’s latest foray into the cypto space, where earlier this month it formed a partnership with BC Technology Group Ltd., a Hong Kong-based investment company that specializes in digital assets.

At the same time, Zodia Custody, launched by the venture capital arm of Standard Chartered and Northern Trust, said earlier this month it will set up a separate crypto brokerage and exchange platform in Britain and Europe, with Hong Kong’s BC Technology Group.

Pointing on the increased institutional interest in digital assets, Duncan Trenholme, co-head of digital assets at ICAP, said:

“Investor interest in this new asset class has exploded dramatically in the last six to eight months. In most of our conversations with clients, they want a separation of custodial roles from execution capabilities which is opposite to the models that exist currently.”