$9.7 billion capital market company Citadel Securities is investing $400 million into crypto exchange Crypto.com, the firm announced. The investment sets the crypto exchange at a $20 billion valuation during its first-ever institutional fundraising round. The company said the capital is expected to accelerate its expansion across asset classes, including tokenized securities and derivatives.
“The convergence of traditional financial markets and digital asset infrastructure is an exciting evolution with the potential to further improve market efficiency,” said Jim Esposito, president of Citadel Securities. “The size of the opportunity in front of us is staggering, as crypto increasingly becomes the rails for finance,” Crypto.com’s CEO Kris Marszalek added in a statement.
Crypto.com sits 11th among the world’s largest crypto exchanges by trading volume, according to CoinMarketCap. Binance is the biggest, and US-listed Coinbase is the biggest US-based market capitalisation at $43B. Crypto.com offers crypto, stocks, and prediction markets to retail traders through its platform and has an internal market-making team. In February, the firm announced it had won conditional approval for a national trust bank charter from the US regulator.
Furthermore, this isn’t Citadel Securities’ first dive into the crypto sector for investment. Citadel Securities invested $200mn in crypto exchange Kraken last November, along with a group of firms that included market-making competitor Jane Street. With the global cryptocurrency market cap exceeding $2.2T in 2026, traditional investment banks and firms are targeting the industry to expand their offerings for clientele. The stablecoin industry marks an alternative way for investors to diversify their holdings, and firms like JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Visa are joining the efforts.