Japanese investing giant SBI is buying a minority stake in cryptocurrency market maker B2C2 for $30 million. Both firms announced a partnership where SBI will use B2C2’s liquidity to support clients trading crypto, and B2C2 will use SBI’s resources to launch a full prime brokerage.

Europe’s third-largest exchange, the Deutsche Boerse, has listed a bitcoin exchange-traded product (ETP). ETPs provide investors with exposure to the underlying asset, in this case without them having to manage private keys.

Compound’s community has voted to change the rules behind the distribution of COMP tokens, to move liquidity away from more riskier assets and into safer, more in-demand assets like stablecoins.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Japanese Investing Giant SBI Buys Minority Stake in Crypto Market Maker B2C2
• Europe’s Third-Largest Exchange Lists Bitcoin ETP
• Compound Community Votes to Change COMP Distribution Rules

At the time of writing, bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $9,149.36 (0.19%) with a daily Top Tier volume of $2.15 bn. As for ether (ETH), it is trading at $226.41 (0.16%) with a daily Top Tier volume of $552.43 million. The MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index is currently tracking at 2,973.90 (-0.18%).

Japanese Investing Giant SBI Buys Minority Stake in Crypto Market Maker B2C2

A unit of the Japanese financial conglomerate SBI Holdings has agreed to buy a minority stake in the London-based cryptocurrency market maker B2C2 for $30 million.

SBI Financial Services and B2C2 also announced a partnership, where the Japanese investing giant will use B2C2’s liquidity to support its clients trading cryptocurrencies, while B2C2 will use SBI’s resources to launch a full prime brokerage for both crypto and other asset classes.

Prime brokers provide services to active trading firms, including custody, execution, and consulting. The addition of prime brokerage services to the cryptocurrency space could help lure institutional investors from the sidelines. According to Max Boonen, B2C2’s founder,  typical prime brokerage services like clearing and financing are underdeveloped in the crypto space.

Boonen added, however, B2C2 is looking beyond crypto:

“We don’t want to limit ourselves to crypto. Crypto is the thing we do because that was how we started,… we’re keeping our eyes on the prize which is that the [prime brokerage] market is a 20 billion annual revenue market.”

B2C2 currently provides liquidity to banks, hedge funds and exchanges, and is best known for helping large investors execute multi-million dollar trades over-the-counter. It has a license to operate in Japan, one of the world’s most developed cryptocurrency markets.

In B2C2’s statement Yoshitaka Kitao, President and CEO of SBI Holdings, said that the Japanese financial giant would work to develop innovative new cryptocurrency products.

Europe’s Third-Largest Exchange Lists Bitcoin ETP

The Deutsche Boerse’s electronic trading venue Xetra has listed a bitcoin exchange-traded product (ETP) from 21Shares, a Swiss-based product provider formerly known as Amun. The firm’s managing director, Laurent Kssis, said:

“The listing on Xetra not only strengthens our current position in Germany but also opens up institutional-grade crypto products to the wider European and international markets.”

The Deutsche Boerse Group has two trading venues, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and Xetra, which together count as the third-largest trading platform in Europe, behind Euronext and the London Stock Exchange. Data from the Deutsche Boerse shows over €150 billion worth of equities and derivatives were traded at Xetra in May, while in December 2019 the volume was of over €300 billion.

Bitcoin ETPs provide investors exposure to BTC in a regulated asset-class, without having to manage private keys. 21Shares launched its first Bitcoin ETP at the end of 2018 on the SIX Swiss Exchange, and has since launched various other products that tract cryptoassets.

Compound Community Votes to Change COMP Distribution Rules

The Compound community has voted to approve a change to the distribution of COMP tokens in an effort to effectively allocate the capital being used in “yield farming” and to realign incentives.

Via the Compound Governance Proposal #11, COMP token holders have voted to change they way tokens are awarded to users providing liquidity and borrowing assets on Compound. Before the change distribution was influenced by the interest being earned on a given asset, incentivizing yield farmers to lend and borrow less liquid assets like Brave’s BAT token.

The new system will base the token allocation on USD-denominated value of assets provided or borrowed on the decentralized finance protocol. The proposal’s goal is to move liquidity to more in-demand assets like stablecoins and out of tokens whose liquidity ended up being unnaturally inflated.

More than 700,000 COMP tokens were staked to approve the proposal, with contributions coming from Dharma, ParaFi Capital, Kyber Network, and Pool Together. The changes will activate on the protocol in two days, following a predefined timelock schedule.

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