Cryptocurrency custody company Copper has been looking for a buyer willing to pay around $500 million for the platform, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Wall Street investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald has been tapped to help sell copper, the people said.
Copper and Cantor did not respond to requests for comment.
Copper’s crown jewel is the ClearLoop settlement system, which allows network participants to perform delivery versus payment (DvP) from custody without bringing assets onto the chain, thereby eliminating settlement risk.
Copper closed its enterprise custody business in 2023 to focus on ClearLoop, which serves many institutional businesses. The company has more than 1,000 active counterparties and more than $50 billion in nominal monthly trading volume, according to its website.
Copper was said to be considering an initial public offering earlier this year, potentially following in the footsteps of cryptocurrency custodian Bitgo, with whom Copper forged a partnership on the ClearLoop app. However, with bitcoin trading below $80,000 and artificial intelligence absorbing most of the capital, the cryptocurrency IPO market has been in a holding pattern this year.
Meanwhile, deals in the cryptocurrency market have been active this year, as crypto-native, traditional and fintech companies look to expand their digital asset capabilities through acquisitions.
Earlier this year, Mastercard agreed to buy UK-based stablecoin infrastructure company BVNK for up to $1.8 billion. Kraken’s parent company Payward agreed to acquire derivatives platform Bitnomial, while Bullish, owner of CoinDesk, announced a $4.2 billion deal to buy Equiniti, aimed at combining transfer agency services with tokenization infrastructure.
And just this week, London-based bank Standard Chartered said it will buy the remaining shares in Zodia Custody, its cryptocurrency custodian subsidiary, that it does not already own. The deal came just weeks after the bank’s venture capital arm reportedly acquired a stake in cryptocurrency trading firm GSR at a valuation of more than $1 billion.
