Citadel Securities has invested $400 million in Crypto.com, valuing the privately held cryptocurrency exchange at $20 billion as Wall Street firms deepen their exposure to digital-asset infrastructure.
The investment will support Crypto.com’s expansion into tokenized securities and derivatives, extending the exchange beyond spot cryptocurrency trading and its consumer app. The companies did not disclose the size of Citadel Securities’ ownership stake or any governance rights attached to the transaction.
Crypto.com co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek said the opportunity was expanding as “crypto increasingly becomes the rails for finance.” The Singapore-based company now operates across crypto trading, stocks, payments, custody, prediction markets and institutional services.
The $20 billion valuation matches the level attached to Kraken’s late-2025 financing and places Crypto.com among the largest privately held digital-asset businesses.
Tokenized Assets and Derivatives Drive Expansion
Crypto.com has been building a broader institutional product stack around assets and markets traditionally handled by securities exchanges, brokers and derivatives platforms.
The company recently appointed Iskandar Vanblarcum to lead the Crypto.com Exchange. The former London Stock Exchange Group and Barclays executive is overseeing institutional growth, regulated prediction markets and planned real-world-asset products.
Its exchange already offers spot, margin, derivatives and over-the-counter trading. Eligible institutional clients in selected jurisdictions can also use BlackRock’s BUIDL tokenized fund as collateral for margin positions.
Tokenized securities could bring stocks, funds and other regulated assets into blockchain-based trading and settlement systems. Crypto.com’s existing U.S. platform combines cryptocurrency, stocks and event contracts, while product availability remains divided across locally regulated group entities.
Citadel Extends Crypto Investment Push
Citadel Securities’ investment places one of the world’s largest electronic market makers closer to a crypto exchange that is expanding into products overlapping with its core businesses in liquidity, derivatives and market structure.
The firm previously invested $200 million in Kraken during an $800 million funding round that also valued the exchange at $20 billion. That financing supported Kraken’s expansion across spot markets, derivatives, tokenized stocks and payments before its renewed push toward a public listing. Kraken parent Payward later cut 150 jobs while reorganizing ahead of a possible IPO.
Citadel Securities also participated in Ripple’s $500 million financing at a $40 billion valuation and backs EDX Markets, an institutional crypto exchange built around non-custodial settlement and traditional market-structure controls.
