Libra Association, the governing body that will oversee Facebook’s proposed cryptocurrency, has added cryptocurrency prime broker Tagomi to its membership panel, TechCrunch reported. Tagomi is the second partner becoming a member of the association this month and would contribute $10 million to fund the operating costs of the project.
Canadian e-commerce company said on Monday it will work with Facebook to get the new currency off the ground despite ongoing regulatory scrutiny. The recent additions are yet a positive reversal for the that shrank when many top partners bailed on the independent collective created by Facebook in late 2019.
The group has been plagued by high-profile departures, including PayPal, Mastercard, eBay, Stripe and others that have pulled out of the coalition of companies involved in a . Other key partners that signed on earlier this summer to pursue a global cryptocurrency project were reportedly reconsidering their involvement.
Tagomi was co-founded by former HFT technologists, including Greg Tusar, global head of electronic trading at Goldman Sachs, and Jennifer Campbell from Union Square Ventures. The prime broker has its electronic-trading service for crypto and is also aggregating liquidity across multiple exchanges and executing trades based on a single unified order book. Tagomi also provides its partners with straight-through process and workflow when managing crypto portfolios and trading across many exchanges and other destinations.
New members as founders back out
According to its latest metrics, the New Jersey-based crypto prime broker handles less than $20 million in weekly crypto volumes or about $1 billion per year. It recently raised $28 million from Peter Thiel’s Founder Fund and Paradigm as well as others.
In an interview, Tagomi co-founder that while more retail-type exchanges are emerging, companies like Tagomi came on board for the institutions.
Shrugging off defections by a number of partners in the shadow of a backlash from many governments’ authorities, Facebook hopes to expand Libra Association to more than 100 members by the time the payment network launches later this year.
Although crypto-native partners, like Coinbase and Xapo, opted to stay on with the , financial giants are increasingly wavering in their support as the embattled project continues to face queries from US and European regulators.
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