Copper.co, the London-based custodian for digital assets, has raised a USD $8 million Series A to grow globally by expanding its commercial team and launching new products.

Institutional investors in this round include leading international investment firm  Target Global, which backed Auto1, Delivery Hero, wefox and Rapyd; LocalGlobe, which is known for successful investments in the likes of Zoopla, Transferwise and Citymapper; and MMC Ventures, which backed Gousto, Interactive Investor and NewVoiceMedia among many others.

This fundraise follows a previous Seed round that saw Copper raise $1.3 million in 2018 to build its custody and prime brokerage solutions and onboard institutional and HNW clients. The firm’s Walled Garden now covers 96% of global crypto liquidity and is seeing over £500 million in transactions each month – with that figure growing steadily.

Copper will use the funds to develop regional client facing operations in key geographies around the world such as North America and Asia. It will also accelerate the launch of new products that give their institutional clients more investment options. Since launch in 2018, Copper has quickly grown its client base with crypto funds, institutions and HNW private traders.

This fundraise follows Copper’s announcement that it will provide prime brokerage services for Europe’s leading UK-regulated institutional manager of digital assets, Nickel Digital Asset Management, on its second fund Digital Gold Institutional. Fidelity Digital Assets was selected as prime custodian for the fund.

“Copper was always designed to be a global offering. Since 2017, we have seen many crypto custody solutions emerge that don’t fully meet the needs of institutions. Instead, they have built for an institutional framework that doesn’t exist yet, and is unlikely ever to, leaving institutions discouraged”, said Dmitry Tokarev, Founder and CEO of Copper. “Our Walled Garden and Prime Brokerage infrastructure truly looks after the security and trading needs of institutions, regardless of their investment strategies and goals. We are seeing volumes increase as our clients see the advantage of our prime brokerage solution, which allows them to make transactions across many trading venues securely and efficiently.

“This venture funding round is a real vote of confidence from investors. Their support will allow us to accelerate our scale up, hiring teams in key regions and introducing new products and services to better meet their needs.”

Dmitry Tokarev is the former CTO and Partner at Dolphin Wealth Management. He founded Copper after witnessing the increased demand from institutions to enter the digital asset space but finding there were not any appropriate services to enable them to do so effectively and securely.

“We believe that the crypto market is lacking infrastructure enabling secure storage, seamless transfer and settlement of digital assets”, said Mike Lobanov, General Partner at Target Global.” Unlike many startups in the crypto market, Copper is built for asset managers by asset managers themselves. Copper’s infrastructure provides institutions with traditional prime brokerage services for the crypto world. Being the first in the market, Copper’s Walled Garden allows secure and instant trades across different exchanges, which is a fundamental breakthrough in the market.”

Oliver Richards, Partner, MMC Ventures, said:

“Following some extensive Blockchain research we are incredibly excited to back Dmitry and the Copper team as our first investment in this space. This team has achieved impressive progress to date driven by their deep understanding of the finance industry and their technology expertise. Institutional interest in digital assets is growing and we believe Copper offers a compelling and unique solution to firms looking to invest.”

Remus Brett, Local Globe, commented:

“At LocalGlobe, we have first-hand experience of the challenge of managing digital assets to the standards required of institutional investors since our first exposure in 2018. Whilst crypto is still far from a mainstream asset class, growth in global institutional demand is only going to increase. Copper's founders’ deep understanding of its clients’ challenges, needs and existing references provides a great platform for market leadership.”