Tyler Winclevos, CEO and co-founder of Gemini Trust on the left, and Cameron Winclevos, president and co-founder of Gemini Trust Company, will speak at the Bitcoin 2021 conference held in Miami, Florida on June 4th, 2021.
Eva Marie Uzcategui | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Gemini, a crypto exchange founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, has secured Nasdaq as a strategic investor ahead of the first public offering this week, CNBC confirmed.
NASDAQ plans to invest $50 million in crypto companies in a partnership that will enable the stock exchange to provide Gemini management services to clients of financial institutions. Gemini will also be a distribution partner in the Nasdaq trade management system known as Calypso.
The investment first reported early on Tuesday by Reuters is separate from the first public offering planned by Gemini this week. Crypto Company is set to raise up to $317 million on Friday, with its public debut on Nasdaq.
“As the regulatory environment around crypto assets evolves, we continue to expand our ability to serve our institutional clients and the broader investor space,” a Nasdaq spokesperson said in a statement shared with CNBC. “We will partner with Gemini on a non-exclusive basis as part of our broader strategy to provide multi-casual and staking services to provide multi-casual and staking services for crypto assets, while maintaining an open ecosystem approach to market infrastructure.
“The investment and partnership structure we adopted at Gemini is consistent with what we usually build through the Nasdaq venture,” they added.
The news comes a day after Nasdaq filed a proposal with the Securities and Exchange Commission, seeking a change in the rules that would allow trading of tokenized stocks and exchange-sold products. Interest in tokenization has increased in recent months, but with formal rules changes, Nasdaq can become the first major traditional stock exchange to allow tokenized securities trading.
In cryptographic terms, tokenization is the process of issuing digital representations on a blockchain network of public securities, real-world assets, or other value. The holder of the tokenized asset does not have full ownership of the asset itself.
Gemini was founded in 2014 by Winklevoss Twins and owns more than $21 billion in assets on the platform at the end of July.
