Nasdaq Acquires Crypto-Friendly Swedish Exchange Cinnober

The second largest stock exchange in the world, Nasdaq, has recently announced that it would acquire another company called Cinnober. This trading solution provider is based in the country of Sweden and already has shown some support for cryptocurrencies.

Cinnober has been historically bullish for digital assets like Bitcoin and one of its goals is to make it easier for companies to invest in these assets. The company has also secured a partnership with BitGo, a giant of the institutional custody security service. BitGo is known for building many partnerships with other companies as a way to secure what is needed for its development.

Nasdaq launches public offer to acquire Cinnober: https://t.co/klCKhyhBo6 — Nasdaq (@Nasdaq) September 14, 2018

Is Nasdaq Preparing for Crypto Trading?

It was reported that soon after the second rejection of the Winkevoss twins’ ETF by the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Nasdaq had a closed-door meeting with crypto experts. In the meeting, it was allegedly discussed how to legitimize crypto as a traditional securities asset to appease the SEC.

Cinnober’s BitGo is an interesting choice in case Nasdaq already has something on its mind for the future of cryptocurrencies. The company has custodian solutions and it is already popular in the crypto space.

The president and CEO of Nasdaq, Adena Friedman, has spoken that Cinnober will add a lot to the intellectual capital and technology of Nasdaq. As the global markets develop fast, new marketplaces emerge and many industries demand new products. According to the company, the acquisition will be very important to enhance the quality of what is being offered by Nasdaq.

Cinnober has already developed many in-house solutions that make it an interesting candidate for Nasdaq to enter the crypto market. The custodian service of the company is one of the services that possibly interest the company the most as custodianship questions are central in what makes institutional investors afraid of cryptos.

Some important names like Citigroup and the Bank of America are already interested in finding solutions for crypto custodianship, so the race has already started.

You can clearly see the importance of this type of service for the industry when you actually use some time to analyze the hacks that have recently occurred on the crypto world. Many exchanges like Bancor, for instance, were hacked, which made investors lose a lot of money.

The problem is still far away from being completely solved, even if multi-signature wallets and cold storage are now technologies that can help the people who decide to use the technology.

Legitimacy is not great for custodian services, though, as large exchanges like Nasdaq can become easy targets if there is not a way to make the services more secure than they currently are in this industry.

NASDAQ is acquiring a Bitcoin friendly Swedish exchange. No one can stop this. The virus is spreading! — Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) September 17, 2018

Who will be the first to actually find the perfect solution and take the institutional share of the market? It is hard to know, but we can already see that Nasdaq is moving to be a relevant player in this industry.