Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (ICE) is an American multinational financial services company formed in 2000 that operates global financial exchanges and clearing houses and provides mortgage technology, data and listing services. Listed on the Fortune 500, S&P 500, and Russell 1000, the company owns exchanges for financial and commodity markets, and operates 12 regulated exchanges and marketplaces. This includes ICE futures exchanges in the United States, Canada, and Europe; the Liffe futures exchanges in Europe; the New York Stock Exchange; equity options exchanges; and OTC energy, credit, and equity markets.
Börse Stuttgart is the sixth largest exchange group in Europe. It has strategic pillars in the capital markets business as well as in the digital and cryptocurrency business. Börse Stuttgart Group employs around 700 people at its locations in Stuttgart, Berlin, Frankfurt, Ljubljana, Milan, Stockholm, and Zürich and holds a total of 15 licences from regulatory authorities in Germany, Sweden and Switzerland.
Jeffrey Craig Sprecher is an American businessman, the founder, chairman, and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, and chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.
Coinbase Global, Inc., branded Coinbase, is an American publicly traded company that operates a cryptocurrency exchange platform. Coinbase is a distributed company; all employees operate via remote work. It is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States in terms of trading volume. The company was founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam. In May 2020, Coinbase announced it would shut its San Francisco, California, headquarters and change operations to remote-first, part of a wave of several major tech companies closing headquarters in San Francisco in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Blockchain.com is a cryptocurrency financial services company. The company began as the first Bitcoin blockchain explorer in 2011 and later created a cryptocurrency wallet that accounted for 28% of bitcoin transactions between 2012 and 2020. It also operates a cryptocurrency exchange and provides institutional markets lending business and data, charts, and analytics.
Circle is a peer-to-peer payments technology company that now manages stablecoin USDC, a cryptocurrency the value of which is pegged to the U.S. dollar. It was founded by Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville in October 2013. Circle is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. USDC, the second largest stablecoin worldwide, is designed to hold at or near a stable price of $1. The majority of its stablecoin collateral is held in short-term U.S. government securities.
Robinhood Markets, Inc. is an American financial services company headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The company provides an electronic trading platform accessible via mobile app that facilitates commission-free trades of stocks, exchange-traded funds and cryptocurrency, as well as cryptocurrency wallets, credit cards and other banking services. The company's revenue comes primarily from payment for order flow, net interest income, and subscription fees. The company has 23.9 million funded customers, 13.7 million monthly active users, and $130 billion in assets under custody.
HTX is a Seychelles-based cryptocurrency exchange. Founded in China as Huobi, the company now has offices in Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and the United States. In August 2018 it became a publicly listed Hong Kong company.
Kraken is a United States–based cryptocurrency exchange, founded in 2011. It was one of the first bitcoin exchanges to be listed on Bloomberg Terminal and was valued at US$3 billion in January 2024. The company has been the subject of several regulatory investigations since 2018, and has agreed to cumulative fines of over $30 million.
Digital Currency Group (DCG) is a venture capital company focusing on the digital currency market. It is located in Stamford, Connecticut. The company has the subsidiaries Foundry, Genesis, Grayscale Investments, and Luno. It also formerly owned CoinDesk.
Bitfinex is a cryptocurrency exchange owned and operated by iFinex Inc, and is registered in the British Virgin Islands. Bitfinex was founded in 2012. It was originally a peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchange, and later added support for other cryptocurrencies.
An initial coin offering (ICO) or initial currency offering is a type of funding using cryptocurrencies. It is often a form of crowdfunding, although a private ICO which does not seek public investment is also possible. In an ICO, a quantity of cryptocurrency is sold in the form of "tokens" ("coins") to speculators or investors, in exchange for legal tender or other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ether. The tokens are promoted as future functional units of currency if or when the ICO's funding goal is met and the project successfully launches.
Binance Holdings Ltd., branded Binance, is a global company that operates the largest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of daily trading volume of cryptocurrencies. Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao, a developer who had previously created high-frequency trading software. Binance was initially based in China, then moved to Japan shortly before the Chinese government restricted cryptocurrency companies. Binance subsequently left Japan for Malta and currently has no official company headquarters.
Bithumb is a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange. Founded in 2014, Bithumb Korea has 8 million registered users, 1 million mobile app users, and a current cumulative transaction volume has exceeded USD $1 trillion.
A security token offering (STO) / tokenized IPO is a type of public offering in which tokenized digital securities, known as security tokens, are sold in security token exchanges. Tokens can be used to trade real financial assets such as equities and fixed income, and use a blockchain virtual ledger system to store and validate token transactions.
Paxos Trust Company is a New York–based financial institution and technology company specializing in blockchain. The company's product offerings include a cryptocurrency brokerage service, asset tokenization services, and settlement services. ItBit, a bitcoin exchange run by Paxos, was the first bitcoin exchange to be licensed by the New York State Department of Financial Services, granting the company the ability to be the custodian and exchange for customers in the United States.
Bitso began as a global cryptocurrency exchange founded in Mexico. It was founded in 2014 by Ben Peters, Pablo Gonzalez and Daniel Vogel. Daniel Vogel is the current chief executive officer. Bitso was the first Latin American company and one of the few cryptocurrency platforms to be regulated by the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission under its Distributed Ledger Technology Framework.
DRW Holdings, LLC, typically referred to as DRW, is a proprietary trading firm based in Chicago. The firm was founded in 1992 by Don Wilson, an options trader at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and was named after his initials: DRW. The firm trades various financial instruments, including fixed income, options and derivatives, energy and agriculture, and cryptocurrency. DRW has offices in Amsterdam, Austin, Greenwich, Tel Aviv, Chicago, New York City, Houston, London, Montreal, and Singapore. DRW is one of the largest trading firms in the world.
Bitkub is a Thailand-based cryptocurrency exchange, operated by Bitkub Online Co., Ltd. under its parent group Bitkub Capital Group Holdings. It was founded in 2018 by Jirayut Srupsrisopa, and was among the first exchanges to receive a digital asset license from the country's Securities and Exchange Commission, in 2019. It claims to be the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the country, with a share of 90% of crypto transactions based on 2021 data from regulated exchanges. In November 2021, SCB announced that it would acquire a 51-percent stake in the company for 17.85 billion baht, valuing the company at over $1 billion and making it one of Thailand's first unicorn start-up companies. However, on 25th August 2022, the deal was cancelled. The SCB stated that the reason for cancellation was due to Bitkub's ongoing lawsuit with Thailand's Securities and Exchange Commission for the alleged involvement in wash and inside trading.
Grayscale Investments is an American digital currency asset management company and subsidiary of Digital Currency Group founded in 2013 and based in Stamford, Connecticut.
US$780 million (2023)
US$−228 million (2023)
US$48 million (2023)