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 to become a member of the association this month and would contribute $10 million to fund the operating costs of the project.
Canadian e-commerce company Shopify said on Monday it would 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 organization’s membership 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 Facebook-led cryptocurrency initiative. 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 a 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 Marc Bhargava told Finance Magnates 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 Libra Association, financial giants are increasingly wavering in their support as the embattled project continues to face queries from US and European regulators.