Citadel Securities invests $400 million in Crypto.com at $20 billion valuation

Quick Take

• Citadel Securities has made a $400 million strategic investment in Crypto.com, representing the crypto exchange's "first institutional funding round."
• Crypto.com plans to use the funding to expand its tokenization and derivatives operations.
• The deal is similar to Citadel's $200 million strategic investment in Kraken at a $20 billion valuation last November.

Citadel Securities has made a strategic $400 million investment in Crypto.com at a $20 billion valuation, according to an announcement on Thursday.

The funding will help accelerate Crypto.com's ongoing expansion into tokenized securities and derivatives, as 24/7 blockchain tech continues to disrupt the legacy finance industry.

"We are thrilled to work with Citadel Securities to continue driving the crypto industry into a new era of institutionalization," Crypto.com co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek said. "The size of the opportunity in front of us is staggering, as crypto increasingly becomes the rails for finance."

The move marks Crypto.com's "first institutional funding round" in its decade-long history, according to the announcement.

Although one of the largest global crypto exchanges, Crypto.com has raised a relatively modest amount of capital, including a $13 million early-stage round and a Series A and angel round where the amounts were undisclosed, according to PitchBook.

Before rebranding, the firm also raised approximately $26.7 million through an initial coin offering in 2017, when the company was known as Monaco. In 2020, Crypto.com deprecated the MCO token and consolidated its ecosystem under the CRO token through a token swap.

Last year, Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT), the publicly traded company behind Truth Social, made a significant purchase of CRO as part of a strategic partnership with Crypto.com, where DJT purchased about 2% of the circulating CRO supply, and Crypto.com purchased $50 million worth of Trump Media stock.

Trump Media is also involved in launching a new company called Trump Media Group CRO Strategy, Inc., through a SPAC deal with Yorkville Acquisition, which plans to build a large CRO treasury potentially totalling billions of dollars.

Crypto.com itself has emerged as a major ecosystem investor through its VC arm, which expanded the size of its fund to $500 million in 2022.

This is far from Citadel Securities' first crypto play. In November, the firm invested $200 million in U.S.-based crypto exchange Kraken at a $20 billion valuation. The firm also co-led Ripple's recent $500 million strategic investment round alongside Fortress Investment Group, valuing Ripple at $40 billion.

It is also a major backer of Digital Asset, the R&D firm behind the Canton blockchain, having participated in multiple rounds. Citadel also has a longstanding execution partnership with tokenization firm Alpaca, and is a participant in that startup's $150 million Series D round.

Of note, Citadel's investment in Ripple reportedly came with investor protections that granted shareholders the right to sell back equity to Ripple after three or four years at an annualized return of 10%, unless Ripple goes public beforehand, guaranteeing a profit, Bloomberg reported.

"The convergence of traditional financial markets and digital asset infrastructure is an exciting evolution with the potential to further improve market efficiency," Citadel Securities President Jim Esposito said in a statement. "Crypto.com has built a foundation to support the continued institutionalization of the digital asset market, and we are pleased to collaborate with the Crypto.com team as we help create the capital markets of the future."

Crypto.com launched Tokenized Stocks in its core app around June 2026, offering exposure to dozens of U.S. stocks and ETFs. The firm also offers popular branded Visa prepaid spending and credit cards.

By way of comparison, Coinbase (COIN), the first major crypto exchange to go public, is trading at around a $43 billion market cap.

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