Clear Street, a financial infrastructure technology firm, has successfully executed bitcoin depositary receipt (BTC DR) trades for institutional clients, UTXO Management, a bitcoin-native asset manager, and GTS, an electronic market-making and fintech firm.
The traded BTC DRs — which are direct, fully fungible, 100 per cent bitcoin-backed securities — were issued by the Receipts Depositary Corporation (RDC).
UTXO initiated the creation of the securities, with resulting receipts held in its prime brokerage account at Clear Street through DTC, along with GTS participating as a counterparty in the trade execution.
They also possess the ability to be in-kind converted on an intraday basis into the underlying bitcoin and vice-versa, with each BTC DR representing a bankruptcy remote, direct ownership claim on an amount of bitcoin, which are held at Anchorage Digital Bank.
The firm says the successful trades demonstrated the ability of BTC DRs to be integrated into existing institutional workflows without the end client requiring new custody arrangements, wallets, or blockchain infrastructure.
According to Clear Street, the transactions are the first instance of BTC DRs being traded through a traditional prime brokerage platform and settled through the Depository Trust Company (DTC).
Commenting on the trades, Robert Rutherford, CEO of Clear Street Digital, says: “By executing the first BTC DR through our cloud native single ledger infrastructure, we are demonstrating that Bitcoin exposure no longer requires a separate operational stack.
“We are proud to deliver this milestone alongside RDC, UTXO Management, and GTS.”
Jessica Raybeck, head of digital asset strategy at GTS, adds: “We continue to see increased interest from institutions around solutions that bridge traditional capital markets infrastructure and emerging digital asset ecosystems.”
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