Coinbase Acquires Routefire to Beef Up Institutional Bitcoin Offering

Leading U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase has acquired trade execution startup Routefire. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"While we'll no longer be supporting the Routefire platform, we are very excited to continue on our mission of bringing advanced trading infrastructure to the rapidly developing cryptocurrency markets by joining Coinbase," Routefire wrote in a blog post Thursday, adding:

"We remain deeply committed to this ecosystem and are excited to help develop Coinbase’s market-leading suite of institutional products, which provides the true end-to-end solution that we believe best meets our customers' needs."

A Coinbase spokesman confirmed the deal but declined to comment.

Additional resources in the trading infrastructure realm couldn't come soon enough for the San Francisco-based crypto exchange. Coinbase has seen intermittent outages in recent days as bitcoin has surged to unprecedented highs currently near $40,000 per coin.

It is Coinbase's first acquisition of the new year, albeit likely a small one. The website of the San Francisco-based Routefire shows a team of seven led by CEO Jason Victor.

In 2020, Coinbase's acquisition of crypto prime broker Tagomi helped the exchange execute mega bitcoin buys for MicroStrategy, One River Digital and potentially others.

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As institutional interest in bitcoin as "digital gold" continues to ramp up, other firms have sought to strengthen their prime brokerage offerings. Prime brokerage refers to a suite of services tailored to the needs of deep-pocketed investors.

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