Cryptocurrency exchange company Coinbase has announced plans to acquire Tagomi, an advanced cryptocurrency brokerage platform specifically targeted at professionals and institutional investors. Terms of the deal are undisclosed and the acquisition is still pending regulatory approval.
While Coinbase is a well-known name for retail investors who are just getting started in the cryptocurrency space and want to buy some bitcoins, the company has been ramping up its offering for professional investors.
The main Coinbase.com interface remains relatively simple to understand, but the company is adding more features to Coinbase Pro, its exchange platform for professionals and crypto enthusiasts. You can access more complicated orders on Coinbase Pro, such as margin trading.
A couple of years ago, Coinbase also added another tier with Coinbase Prime. In addition to market data and trading strategies, the company wants to add more features for institutional investors, such as algorithmic trading, API and third-party platform support. According to the site, those features “will be rolled out over the coming months.”
Tagomi will expand the offering for those institutional investors. Eventually, Coinbase wants to provide an experience that works more or less like Wall Street-level trading experience in equities and FX markets. In particular, Tagomi lets you access 14 different exchanges from your Tagomi account, which greatly improves the liquidity of your orders.
Coinbase also runs Coinbase Custody, a service that helps you store large amounts of cryptocurrencies with segregated cold storage, insurance, staking and regulation from the New York Department of Financial Services. You can access an over-the-counter trading desk from Coinbase Custody as well.
Tagomi has attracted well-known clients, such as Paradigm, Pantera, Bitwise and Muticoin. The startup had raised $28 million from Founders Fund, Collaborative Fund, Elad Gil, Digital Currency Group and others.
