Crypto custody firm Copper is looking to sell the company for $500 million

Cryptocurrency custody firm Copper has been out shopping itself, seeking a buyer willing to pay about $500 million for the platform, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Wall Street investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald has been appointed to help sell Copper, the people said.

Copper and Cantor didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The jewel in Copper’s crown is the ClearLoop settlement system, which enables network participants to do delivery versus payment (DvP) from within custody without bringing assets onchain, thereby eliminating settlement risk.

Copper closed its enterprise custody business in 2023 to focus on ClearLoop, launched in 2020 and caters to dozens of institutional firms. The firm boasts more than 1,000 active counterparties and over $50 billion in monthly notional trading volume, according to its website.

Copper was said to be weighing an IPO earlier this year, potentially following in the footsteps of crypto custodian Bitgo, with whom Copper forged a partnership on the ClearLoop application. However, with bitcoin trading below $80,000, and artificial intelligence soaking up most of the capital, the crypto IPO market has been on a holding pattern this year.

Meanwhile, the deal-making in the crypto market has been active this year, as crypto-native, traditional and fintech firms are looking to expand their digital asset capabilities through acquisitions.

Earlier this year, Mastercard agreed to buy U.K.-based stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK for as much as $1.8 billion. Kraken’s parent company, Payward, agreed to acquire the derivatives platform Bitnomial, while Bullish, owner of CoinDesk, announced a $4.2 billion deal to buy Equiniti, aimed at combining transfer agency services with tokenization infrastructure.

And just this week, London-based bank Standard Chartered said it will buy the remaining shares of Zodia Custody, its cryptocurrency custodian subsidiary, that it doesn’t already own. The deal came just weeks after the bank’s venture capital division reportedly took a stake in crypto trading firm GSR at a valuation of more than $1 billion.