Galaxy Digital Invests $44 Million Into Institutional Cryptocurrency

In order to access its exclusive asset storage and management capabilities, Galaxy Digital has put $44 million into an institutional bitcoin custody platform.

The purchase of GK8, a company that has created its own patent bitcoin custody system with the intention of providing safe asset management for institutional customers, has been successfully completed by the cryptocurrency investment business owned by Mike Novogratz.

The firm specializes in the provision of cold vault technology, which enables transactions to be carried out despite the absence of a connection to the internet. It has the potential to automate transactions thanks to its in-house multi-party computation (MPC) vault, and the service also gives access to decentralized finance (DeFi) networks, tokenization, and NFT trading.

According to a statement released by Novogratz, one of the primary motivations for the purchase was the rising demand for custody services among investors. The cold storage solutions and wallet technologies developed by GK8 will be integrated into GalaxyOne, the premier brokerage platform that will soon be released by Galaxy Digital.

As a result of the business transaction, Galaxy will expand its operations to include a location in Tel Aviv, where they will bring on approximately 40 staff formerly employed by GK8. Lior Lamesh and Shahar Shamai, co-founders of GK8, will continue in their roles as leaders of Galaxy's custodial technologies offering after the company was acquired.

At the time of its introduction, GalaxyOne is expected to provide institutional-grade consumers with access to a comprehensive variety of bitcoin financial services. Trading, lending, derivatives, cross-portfolio margining, and custodial offers are all going to be a part of this. All of these are going to be handled by GK8.

In December 2022, Galaxy announced the purchase of Argo Blockchain's primary mining operation for the price of $65 million. This move was Galaxy's way of doubling down on its investments in the cryptocurrency mining business. In order to avoid going bankrupt during a challenging year for the mining industry, the mining company was forced to sell up its Helios mining plant.