Caspian Partners with Coinbase for Institutional Crypto Drive

Institutional crypto asset trading platform Caspian has partnered with crypto exchange Coinbase, as part of a drive to attract more institutional investors to the market.

Caspian—a joint venture between Tora and Kenetic—will connect with Coinbase’s institutional trading venue Coinbase Prime so clients can course trades through Coinbase. Caspian offers a trading and risk reporting platform for both buy-side and sell-side traders with institutional-grade features like customizable market data, audit report generation, and access to indicators.

Jehan Chu, Caspian’s chief strategy officer, and a managing partner at Kenetic, says the partnership with Coinbase offers a further expansion of its client base as well as helping to open up the crypto market to more institutional investors.

“Coinbase has a large audience but they are tailored for retail, so it’s an advantage for them to open the institutional base,” Chu says. “This is a long-term strategic project for us since institutional investors want to have a secure platform to trade crypto assets.”

He adds the Caspian’s expertise in trading software, through Tora, means they have not started with a blank slate and builds on years of knowledge.

Through Caspian’s connection with Coinbase Prime, it will bring sophisticated trading and portfolio management to the exchange. The crypto exchange has been heavily going after institutional investors in the past year, having announced a suite of products targeted towards this market several months ago, including Coinbase Prime.

Caspian is connected to at least 25 major crypto exchanges including BitMEX, Gemini, Bitfinex, Poloniex, Huobi, OKEx, BitFlyer, and Binance. Chu says the company continues to look for new exchange partners who “have the best audiences and volumes.” It also collaborated with Galaxy Digital, a bank focused on digital assets, and Blocktower, to connect investors and traders in the crypto space this year.

It has already on-boarded 15 customers and is in the process of onboarding an additional 170 more. Chu says that as Coinbase is one of the largest and popular crypto exchanges, their customer base is expected to grow even more.

“We’re fortunate to have partnered with Coinbase as they’re very well-known with American customers and this can signal to more investors that the crypto market is ready,” says Chu. “This is a natural evolution of the space, the mix of the cowboy retail crypto investors and the more traditional hedge fund or bank trader.”