Interactive Brokers (IBKR), one of the biggest stock trading platform has began offering the direct buying of crypto.
In the third quarter earnings report the brokers said they use a third-party Cryptocurrency Service Provider (CSP) to buy, sell and hold crypto-assets in an account in the customer’s name at the CSP.
“As of September 30, 2022, the fair value of the crypto-assets held in the customers’ names at the CSP was $101 million ($134 million as of January 1, 2022), which consisted of $55 million of Bitcoin, $44 million of Ethereum and $2 million of other crypto-assets,” IBKR said.
That’s a fairly small amount compared to the holdings of crypto specific exchanges, but the broker is fairly new to it and offers plenty of bitcoin ETFs based in Canada, and many bitcoin ETNs in Europe.
Still some of their clients prefer actual crypto, with their holdings remaining somewhat stable despite a year long bear that has seen many cryptos dive in prices.
The addition of crypto services for this broker further indicates there’s significant demand from traditional investors to diversify into crypto.
Not least because although RobinHood has far more customers, IBKR is thought to hold far more money with the average investor having more than $100,000.
