On July 15, 2026, Virtu Financial announced it had joined BitGo Prime's global liquidity network, and the same day disclosed preliminary Q2 results: expected net income of $285 million and adjusted net trading income of $718 million, roughly $11.6 million per trading day.

The deal pairs two functions that centralised crypto exchanges normally bundle together. BitGo handles qualified custody and settlement; Virtu handles liquidity and pricing. Client assets stay in custody while execution routes through a separate liquidity network. Scotte Moegling, Virtu's head of business development for digital assets, said the arrangement lets the firm offer institutional clients "the competitive pricing they have come to expect across other asset classes."

Regulatory footing on both sides

Both firms come with existing licences. Virtu Financial Ireland received MiCA authorisation, publicly disclosed on June 2, 2026, giving it passporting rights to provide liquidity and trading services across all 27 EU member states. BitGo Europe has held a MiCAR licence from BaFin since May 2025, covering custody and settlement. That regulatory overlap is not coincidental: it lets the two firms plug into each other without creating gaps in compliance coverage.

Standard Chartered is moving along a parallel track. According to Bloomberg sources, the bank is in early discussions to launch a crypto prime brokerage inside its SC Ventures unit, with no launch date set. It has already backed custodian Zodia Custody and trading platform Zodia Markets, and in July became the first global systemically important bank to offer spot crypto trading to institutional clients.

The pattern is consistent: the firms building custody and execution infrastructure for institutional crypto are the ones that already have regulatory standing in traditional markets. Crypto-native platforms are no longer the only option, and increasingly not the default one.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or an investment recommendation.