TP ICAP Group Plc’s crypto spot trading platform completed its first Bitcoin trade, as a growing list of traditional financial firms expand their digital-asset services.

The platform, Fusion Digital Assets, is aimed at institutional market participants and currently supports trading in Bitcoin and Ether against the US dollar. Fidelity Digital Assets is providing trade settlement and custody for assets on the platform, which launched earlier this week, the world’s largest interdealer broker said in a statement. The venue is registered with the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority and plans to expand the assets available based on demand, TP ICAP said. It also expects to add further custodians, it said.

By providing custody through a third party, the platform is seeking to offer institutions a less risky way to trade crypto, akin to how they invest in other, more established asset classes. By contrast, most existing crypto exchanges will do everything from matching trades, offering margin loans, as well as settlement and custody. While this reduces the chain of middlemen involved in handling a trade, it can leave users more exposed to potential conflicts of interests, and more vulnerable in case a trading venue collapses.

“The past year has highlighted why when operating a market it is imperative to mitigate for conflicts of interest, segregate roles, and responsibilities, and have robust governance,” said Duncan Trenholme, global co-head of digital assets at TP ICAP. “There is no doubt that the events of 2022 have accelerated the transition to this segregated operating model as investors are now acutely aware of the risks that exist if they are not addressed.”

Falling cryptocurrency prices triggered to a wave of bankruptcies last year that culminated in the collapse of the FTX exchange in November, which led to millions of dollars in losses for investors.

Because FTX had been the preferred venue for institutional trading firms and other professional investors, its collapse left a void for market infrastructure that some traditional financial firms are hoping to fill. A unit of the London Stock Exchange Group plans to start clearing Bitcoin index futures and options contracts by the end of the year, while global exchange group Nasdaq Inc. is building custody services for digital assets, joining similar moves by BNY Mellon and Fidelity, among others.

Read the full article on Bloomberg here.