Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities wants to be a crypto liquidity provider

Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities plans to become a liquidity provider—meaning it’ll start trading cryptocurrencies on major exchanges like Coinbase and Binance, according to a Bloomberg report.

Citadel stayed away from crypto for years because the regulations sucked, but now that President Donald Trump is making America the “crypto capital of the planet,” they think it’s safe to jump in.

Citadel plans to kick things off by setting up crypto market-making teams overseas first. Why outside the US? Because regulations at home still aren’t clear enough, even with Trump pushing a pro-crypto agenda.

FTX’s crash showed everyone how dangerous mixing market-making, custody, and trading could be—so Citadel, Schwab, and Fidelity built their own crypto exchange, EDX Markets, which opened last year, but of course, only institutional traders could get in.

But now that Trump’s administration has already issued an executive order telling regulators to clean up the crypto mess left by Biden’s people and create a national digital asset stockpile, things are finally looking up.

Trump appointed SEC commissioner Hester Peirce, famous for liking crypto, to run a special crypto task force, and also made David Sacks the White House crypto czar, who is now busy “evaluating” if America could start its own Bitcoin reserve.

Wall Street scrambles to cash in on Trump’s crypto promises

Wall Street’s biggest banks, who previously wouldn’t touch crypto with a ten-foot pole, suddenly want to handle IPOs, convertible bonds, and crypto-related share sales. Morgan Stanley is out there right now calling crypto companies, trying to line up initial public offerings.

Bank of America’s doing the same thing. Their top investment banking execs are sitting in meetings talking about how they can score huge fees off crypto deals. CEO Brian Moynihan straight-up admitted it on CNBC, saying banks “will come in hard on the transactional side” as soon as regulations clear up.

Royal Bank of Canada also started handling a convertible bond sale for Bitcoin mining company Core Scientific in 2024.

Other banks like Jefferies, JPMorgan, Cantor Fitzgerald, and Moelis & Co. have been quietly working behind the scenes with crypto companies, getting ready for IPOs. Crypto companies Circle, Kraken, and Gemini all want to go public soon.

Even HSBC—traditionally boring and safe—just upgraded one of their senior forex strategists, giving him the new title of Head of Digital Assets Research.

The crypto IPO market was basically frozen solid under Biden. Regulators pressured banks to pause crypto deals completely, stopping several IPO plans dead in their tracks. Coinbase’s direct listing back in 2021 was basically the last big deal banks touched. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Allen & Co., and Citigroup worked on that deal.

Morgan Stanley wasn’t on Coinbase’s IPO, but they did help them sell convertible bonds later on. To date, the capital raising business by crypto firms — from IPOs and equity offerings to convertible bonds — has gone to a fairly regular gamut of lenders, though the largest investment banks have been selective.

The highest-profile publicly-traded company in crypto remains Coinbase Global Inc., with Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Allen & Co., and Citigroup Inc. working on the much-hyped direct listing in 2021.

Jefferies Financial Group Inc. is also active on crypto deals, advising Bullish on its potential listing along with JPMorgan. It’s also among banks working with Figure Technologies Inc. — the financial technology firm co-founded by former SoFi Technologies Inc. head Mike Cagney — on an IPO, Bloomberg reported in late 2023. Moelis & Co. and Cantor Fitzgerald are among the firms active in the space as well.