- Interactive Brokers CEO Thomas Peterffy says his company will offer crypto trading by the end of summer.
- Interactive Brokers saw its revenue jump 67.9% year-over-year to $893 million in the first quarter.
- The company is now set to compete with Coinbase Global, Binance, and others for a slice of crypto trading market share.
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Interactive Brokers CEO Thomas Peterffy said his company will offer cryptocurrency trading by the end of the summer on Wednesday.
Speaking at Piper Sandler's Global Exchange & FinTech Conference, Peterffy said, "customers certainly are asking for [crypto trading] and we expect to be ready to offer it to them by the end of the summer," CNBC reported.
Peterffy said that the greatest hurdle his company will face in starting cryptocurrency trading is keeping customers "100% safe."
"As for hurdles, the greatest hurdle is how do you keep you customers 100% safe. How do you make it 100% sure that no one will steal their coins in spite of the fact that they are untraceable? We will find out more about this when we open for business at the end of the summer," the CEO said.
As of the end of May, Interactive Brokers had 1.39 million client accounts and $348.3 billion in client equity.
In the first quarter, the American multinational brokerage saw its revenue jump 67.9% year-over-year to $893 million.
Coinbase Global and Binance, the two largest crypto exchanges in the world by volume, will be Interactive Brokers' main competition in the crypto trading space.
Raymond James analyst Patrick O'Shaughnessy recently tagged Coinbase with an "underperform" rating arguing the company lacks a moat to protect from competition.
"Over and over again history has shown that brokerages and exchanges see excess profits competed away unless there is a structural barrier to entry," O'Shaughnessy wrote in a note to clients.
Now, the analyst's predictions may be coming to fruition as companies like Interactive Brokers begin to enter the crypto markets.