San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has revealed it helped One River Asset Management, a hedge fund specializing in volatility bets, execute one of the “largest digital asset trades in history.”
In a blog post, Coinbase’s Head of Institutional Sales, Trading, Custody, and Prime Services Brett Tejpaul wrote the exchange was selected as One River’s partner and custodian to enter the cryptocurrency space.
The post adds One river was “looking for a prime brokerage solution for a large transaction,” and ended up going with Coinbase Institutional, a service meant to onboard institutional clients by combining its custody, advanced trading platform, and prime services.
Per the blog post, the exchange helped one River execute one of the “largest digital asset trades in history.” It reads:
One River worked with Coinbase to invest an undisclosed amount in digital assets, resulting in one of the largest digital asset trades in history. The initial trades were completed over the course of five days and executed at different speeds to work through varying market conditions.
One River’s Chief Operating Officer and Chief Risk Officer, Ian Malloch, was quoted as saying Coinbase met the firm’s “rigorous operational and compliance standards.” While the value One River invested in crypto wasn’t disclosed, the firm has committed to holding over $1 billion in both BTC and ETH by early 2021.
In December 2020, One River had reportedly already invested over $600 million in bitcoin. The firm was reportedly looking to seize on the growing interest in crypto among institutional investors. Its CEO Eric Peters revealed the firm was wary of triggering a surge in the price of both BTC and ETH, and as such executed its traders “as inconspicuously as possible.”
Coinbase has in the past revealed it helped MicroStrategy buy $425 million of bitcoin without moving the market. Per the exchange, its team uses a type of smart order routing to minimize the trade’s impact on the market and disguise the overall trade size.
With MicroStrategy, its tools helped the firm save “approximately $4.25 million” when it was buying BTC. The business intelligence firm has already invested $1.125 billion in BTC. It now holds 70,470 coins worth $2.45 billion.
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