Institutional investment in digital assets is accelerating at a rapid pace, but new infrastructure is required to safeguard custody and support efficient trading of this emerging asset class.

Institutions face significant challenges when it comes to interacting and trading across centralized exchanges, including significant operational and counterparty risks. Investment remains hampered by the lack of adequate infrastructure that can satisfy global investors and regulatory standards.

Copper designs and develops the infrastructure which enables institutions to acquire, store, and trade digital assets in a compliant manner allowing them to have complete certainty that investors’ capital is safe.

Copper provides global banks, payment service providers (PSPs), exchanges, trading firms, and foundations with infrastructure to access digital asset markets and securely hold and trade crypto assets.

Copper’s platform combines a suite of technology and prime brokerage solutions, from flexible custody to margin lending and over-the-counter (OTC) execution, along with instant offline transfer, and settlement across a proprietary integrated network of crypto exchanges.

At the core of Copper’s infrastructure is ClearLoop, a framework that connects the universe of exchanges in one secure trading loop — with real-time settlement across the Networks.

Integrated with market-leading spot and derivative crypto exchanges, ClearLoop has already transformed the way in which institutional investors engage with the cryptocurrency asset class since launching in May 2020.

ClearLoop enables clients to trade directly from their custody account, without having to move their funds/assets to exchanges. This delivers multiple benefits such as reducing credit risk, optimizing capital efficiency, and over time this should foster positive network effects.

ClearLoop also increases capital efficiency, letting users delegate assets on, off, and between exchanges in near real-time.

Copper’s award-winning Custody technology serves as an end-to-end multi-party computation (MPC)-protected custodial architecture for digital assets that provides maximum security without compromise or transactional control.

Copper’s MPC technology implements a Zero-Trust methodology for executing transactions and transfers. MPC removes the entire concept of a key and splits the key shards between the custodian, the client, and a third party. This ensures that assets remain safe from both external and internal attacks.

Copper custody can be used to create a secure closed environment for the transmission of assets across multiple exchanges, hot wallets, and offline vaults.

Copper’s security offering also includes comprehensive insurance policies, 24/7 SOC & specialist incident response, AI/ML-enabled events & incident management, click-of-a-button access to deep liquidity with 10+ Market Makers, one simple home for price discovery and execution, completely private and anonymous trades with real-time instant settlement, aggregated liquidity with limit orders to ensure best execution price, and live price updates every 3 seconds.

Within Copper’s platform, users can also stake assets held in Copper’s custody and access DeFi protocols – all with the help of a dedicated account manager.

Copper is a member of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA), Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA), Chamber of Digital Commerce, the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF), Swiss Financial Services Standards Association (VQF) Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC), techUK, and Travel Rule Universal Solution Technology (TRUST).

Copper’s employee growth rose by 188% in 2022, a year characterized by massive lay-offs in crypto and the broader technology sector, and the company welcomed six appointments to its leadership team.

Despite the downturn, Copper recently announced new exchanges joining the ClearLoop network and has experienced significant increases in trading volume and client onboarding since the end of 2022. The Company anticipates a further acceleration in its core business.

Copper recently obtained a SOC2 Type 2 assessment which required an extensive and deep examination of its controls. This achievement, rare in the digital assets space, bears testimony to Copper’s high standards of governance and service as it continues to work towards setting the standard in the digital assets industry.

In November 2022, Copper announced that it has $500 million of insurance for digital assets in cold storage. Coverage has been arranged by global professional services firm Aon, using a panel of insurers led by Canopius, a global specialty (re)insurer, and Lloyd’s of London syndicate.

In January 2023, Copper announced the appointment of Lord (Philip) Hammond of Runnymede, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, as Chair. Lord Hammond stated, “I have greatly enjoyed working with Copper, a company that has pioneered the use of digital asset investment technology and which is increasingly emerging as the leading option for global financial institutions to trade and safeguard their digital assets.”

In January 2023, Copper announced that Huobi is in discussions to join Copper’s ClearLoop Network. ClearLoop will allow institutional clients of both Copper and Huobi to delegate capital for immediate trading, while their assets remain secure in Copper’s custody. Five of the top ten global crypto exchanges have either integrated or are working towards integrating with ClearLoop.

In January 2023, Copper announced that BitMart will be partnering with Copper and joining the ClearLoop network. Copper will offer BitMart’s institutional clients the ability to trade on the BitMart exchange while their funds remain in Copper’s custody, thus mitigating counterparty risk exposure, improving capital efficiency, and speeding up settlement times.

In February 2023, Copper announced that Gate.io is now fully integrated with Copper's ClearLoop solution. This integration will serve as a mutual benefit to both parties, as institutional clients can utilize Copper.co's technology to deploy capital on the exchange and trade immediately, while also maintaining independent custody of their funds with Copper.

In March 2023, Copper announced key initiatives necessary to realign the business and focus on the success of its custody and prime services solutions. These actions come after an extensive business review and thorough assessment of wider digital asset market shifts and regulatory conditions.

In March 2023, Copper announced a new trust and collateral structure to support and strengthen Copper’s ClearLoop off-exchange settlement service. This will provide Copper’s clients with legal assurances on how user accounts are managed, and their assets returned in the event of one of Copper’s partner exchanges, or Copper, becoming insolvent. None of the assets held with Copper Custody were exposed to the collapse of FTX. Customers that lost digital assets because of the FTX fallout will likely have to wait a long time for a chance to recover their assets, and it can take years for all or some funds to be recovered when companies become insolvent. As a result, Copper created a new trust and collateral structure providing one of the most secured and safe custodianship products for their customers.

In March 2023, Lazard, the world’s largest independent investment bank, placed Copper on its annual index of the top 100 companies. The Lazard 100 is a curated list of companies Lazard believes will be disruptors in their respective industries. Lazard cites Copper’s fundraising efforts last year, as well as the growing need for market infrastructure for institutional investors, as reasons for Copper’s placement.

In April 2023, Copper partnered with OKX, the world’s second-largest crypto exchange by trading volume and a leading Web3 technology company, to bring off-exchange settlements to institutional customers using Copper's ClearLoop technology. The collaboration is especially significant for large-scale institutional digital asset traders who seek alternative ways to hold assets as well as immediate access to OKX's highly liquid markets and advanced trading tools.