Prime Broker Hidden Road Adds Major Crypto Exchanges, Expands Use of BlackRock’s BUIDL Token

Hidden Road, a global credit network for institutions that includes trading in digital assets, said it added a clutch of major exchanges to its prime brokerage platform. It also expanded the use of BlackRock’s BUIDL token by accepting it as collateral across its network.

The company is now integrated with Coinbase International Exchange (following a tie-up with Coinbase Exchange in 2022), OKX (including Nitro Spreads), Deribit (including options), Bitfinex, Bullish (the owner of CoinDesk), AsiaNext and SIX Digital Exchange, the company said in a press release on Monday.

With interest rates running high, institutions trading digital assets in the hundreds of millions of dollars are not going to miss out on circa 5% virtually risk-free from holding a BlackRock money market fund token. Any non-carry asset is going to be a challenge when clients can use BlackRock’s BUIDL token as collateral and to earn interest, said Michael Higgins, Hidden Road’s global head of business development.

“Clients can post collateral to Hidden Road in the form of the BUIDL token, and we would recognize that as good margin,” Higgins said in an interview. “Hidden Road then finances those trades on the relevant exchange with, say, USDT or USDC, so the client can actually trade while posting assets to us that earn interest.”

Owing to its existing partnership with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), Hidden Road can also cross margin and margin finance digital asset tokens such as BUIDL on the CME, Higgins said.

“Previously, a client could only post bitcoin as collateral and Hidden Road would provide margin financing to trade on the CME. But of course the bitcoin didn’t earn interest. Now they can still do that, but they could also post BUIDL as collateral and we’ll fund them dollars on the CME. The difference is that with BUIDL, they earn interest,” he said. “As far as we know, we are the only clearing firm that allows customers to post digital assets as margin to trade on the CME.”

In addition to the new exchanges, liquidity providers B2C2, IMC and Laser Digital, and software vendors Talos and TT have also joined Hidden Road.