Zodia Custody, a cryptocurrency exchange and custody platform that is owned by the British multinational bank Standard Chartered, recently completed a new series A investment round that brought in a total of $36 million. The primary investor in this round was SBI Holdings of Japan.
After the completion of the fundraising round, SBI Holdings rose to the position of being the second-largest shareholder. Zodia Custody is still owned by Standard Chartered, which makes them the company’s majority shareholder.
Zodia Custody intends to put the newly acquired capital toward expanding its geographic reach beyond its existing markets in Europe and Asia and providing support for other cryptocurrencies, such as staked Ether. These two goals are directly related to one another.
However, according to Julian Sawyer, the Chief Executive Officer of Zodia Custody, the company plans to steer clear of the United States due to the lack of clarity regarding the applicable regulations.
The announcement comes after Zodia completed its joint venture with SBI Holdings in February, which enabled the company to expand its customer base in Japan. The first announcement that Standard Chartered had made regarding its plans to provide institutional custody for digital currencies such as Bitcoin was made in the year 2020.
Zodiac Custody was able to weather both the bear market in cryptocurrencies in 2022 as well as significant industry collapses such as those of FTX and Celsius.
Compiled by Coinbold