The cryptocurrency custodian company Anchorage has just moved to crypto trading services for its customers, allowing them to trade digital assets directly with vault-stored money.
The announcement came on January 15th. Based in San Francisco, Anchorage just acquired the data analytics company Merkle Data. While the amount of the transaction was not disclosed, the move marks the beginning of an expansionary phase for Anchorage, a company that was originally focused on providing custodial services to institutions.
Anchorage also has a solid funding of around $57 million and is backed by some of the most prominent VCs such as Andreessen Horowitz, Blockchain Capital and Polychain.
The new service is called Anchorage Trading and will be limited to institutional customers only, which is similar to its custodian services. Anchorage will charge traders a fee of ten basis points for every trade for the amount involved.
The new crypto trading feature was introduced, as Anchorage’s clients showed an increasing demand for such a service. As per the official company announcement, the platform offers its customers efficient execution across various venues.
The acquisition of Merkle Data points to a potential strategic advantage for Anchorage, as the platform is expecting to benefit from the capabilities of Merkle’s data analytics expertise and technology, which has already been integrated into Anchorage’s services.
The special feature of Merkle is that the company developed a special intelligent algorithm that detects manipulative behaviours in the cryptocurrency market.
This is what the CEO of Merkle Data told press about the acquisition:
We are joining forces to further our shared mission of serving institutional crypto investors and strengthening the crypto financial system.