Galaxy acquires institutional crypto custody firm for $44M
Galaxy Digital has invested $44 million into an institutional cryptocurrency custody platform to faucet into its proprietary asset storage and administration capabilities.
Mike Novogratz’s cryptocurrency funding agency has accomplished the acquisition of GK8, which has developed its personal patent cryptocurrency custody expertise geared toward giving safe asset administration for institutional customers.
The service focuses on offering chilly vault expertise that enables the execution of transactions with out web connectivity. Its in-house multi-party computation (MPC) vault supplies the flexibility to automate transactions, and the service additionally supplies entry to Decentralized Finance (DeFi) networks, tokenization, NFT and buying and selling.
An announcement from Novogratz highlighted elevated investor demand for custody providers as a key cause behind the acquisition. GK8’s chilly storage options and pockets expertise will probably be onboarded into Galaxy Digital’s upcoming prime brokerage platform GalaxyOne.
The enterprise deal will see Galaxy add an workplace in Tel Aviv to its group, with almost 40 GK8 workers turning into a part of the broader group. GK8 founders Lior Lamesh and Shahar Shamai keep on via the acquisition to steer Galaxy’s custodial applied sciences providing.
Associated: Mike Novogratz calls Helios a ‘transformative acquisition’ for Galaxy
GalaxyOne is touted to supply a broad vary of cryptocurrency monetary providers to institutional-grade customers on its launch. This may embrace buying and selling, lending, derivatives, cross-portfolio margining in addition to custodial choices managed by GK8.
Galaxy doubled down on its investments into the cryptocurrency mining sector in December 2022, asserting a $65 million acquisition of Argo Blockchain’s principal mining operation. The mining agency needed to unload its Helios mining facility to keep away from chapter throughout a troublesome yr for the sector.
