Barclays joins Copper investor group
Financial conglomerate Barclays from the UK decided to turn its attention to the cryptocurrency industry. It took part in the financing round of Copper. Barclays now owns a stake in the crypto business, which it acquired for several million dollars. The exact amount has not yet been disclosed.
In addition to Barclays, several large companies are investors. Copper works with institutional investors, providing brokerage and settlement services, as well as supporting custody operations for digital assets.
The current year has not been a good one for the cryptocurrency industry. As a result of falling asset prices, many companies have experienced rising losses and some have even been forced to declare bankruptcy. The decline in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies was due to the global trend of declining interest in risky assets, which has had a negative impact on the sector as a whole.
Barclays is one of the world’s largest financial corporations. It has a developed network of offices in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. The conglomerate has a subsidiary company Barclays Bank PLC.
The history of the financial giant began in 1690 when a group of London businessmen created a bank. The institution evolved, and by 1728 it had the name Barclays when the founders were joined by entrepreneur Henry Barkley.
By 1896, the company included several banks, which operated under a single name. The policy of takeover and merger became the main focus for the conglomerate, and until the 1930s a considerable number of British financial institutions joined it, and in 1938 a bank in India began operating under the Barclays brand.
The U.S. representative office was opened in 1965, and a year later the conglomerate began issuing credit cards. The first ATM in the world also belonged to Barclays, it was installed in 1967. The investment arm emerged in 1986, and since then it has been investing in promising projects worldwide.
Barclays has been implicated in a number of scandals, the most significant being a situation that occurred in 2015. At that time, it turned out that employees of the conglomerate were involved in a scheme to distort the LIBOR rate for profit. In addition to LIBOR, employees of Citigroup and Deutsche Bank were involved in the fraudulent scheme. The British bank was fined in the amount of $452 million, which was paid to the market regulators in Great Britain and the United States. In addition, the top management of the conglomerate resigned.
Another scandal came to light in 2017 when Barclays management was accused of conspiring to increase investments. In order to avoid the nationalization process during the 2008 crisis, the management fraudulently obtained large investments from Qatar.
