Peter Thiel-Backed Electronic Brokerage Firm Tagomi Launches

Tagomi Holdings Inc., an electronic brokerage startup backed by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm, has launched, according to a Dec. 17 press release.

Tagomi is an electronic brokerage for digital assets. The firm’s offerings include cross market execution, capital management, post-trading reporting, as well as settlement and custodial services.

According to Chief Executive Officer of Tagomi, Jennifer Campbell, the company aims to ease the operational challenges related to trading digital assets. The company caters to clients that “require institutional operational standards.”

As Cointelegraph reported in October, institutional investors replaced high net-worth individuals as the biggest buyers of cryptocurrency transactions over $100,000. A recent report from Diar states that institutional investors have shifted to over-the-counter (OTC) markets.

Tagomi reportedly raised $16 million from such industry players as Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund that invests in technology companies, seed-stage investment fund SV Angel, private equity and venture capital firm Collaborative Fund, and others.

Founders Fund initially announced its plans to invest in Tagomi in May 2018, as reported by WSJ. Thiel reportedly said then that Bitcoin (BTC) could become the digital equivalent of gold, as well as a potential hedge on the market.

That month, Thiel suggested that “longing” Bitcoin rather than shorting is better trading strategy. Despite this, he gave a probability of up to 80 percent that the world’s first cryptocurrency would ultimately become worthless.

Later in July, EOS developer Block.one secured investments from Thiel along with crypto mining hardware billionaire Jihan Wu of Bitmain. At the time, Thiel was rumored to have invested up to $20 million in Bitcoin through Founders Fund.