Komainu and Gate link custody to nine-exchange margin pool
Institutional clients can trade across Binance, OKX, Hyperliquid and six other venues without moving assets out of custody
Digital asset custodian Komainu and cryptocurrency exchange Gate have expanded their partnership to allow institutional clients to trade across nine exchanges from a single margin pool while keeping assets in segregated custody.
The firms said on Thursday 29 October that Komainu's custody infrastructure is being integrated with CrossEx, Gate's cross-exchange trading product. Clients will be able to trade on Gate, Binance, Bybit, OKX, Deribit, Kraken, Hyperliquid, Lighter and
Aster through a single API connection, without depositing or reconciling margin separately at each venue.
The move builds on the off-exchange settlement (OES) partnership the firms announced in March, which added Gate to Komainu Connect, Komainu's collateral management platform. Under that arrangement, client assets remain in custody with Komainu while trading takes place on Gate, rather than being transferred onto the exchange.
"Institutions need secure and seamless access to liquidity, and this integration delivers exactly that," Darren Jordan, chief commercial officer at Komainu, said at the time.
Meanwhile, Addis Hu, global head of institutional business at Gate, said in March that market structure was moving towards a clearer separation between custody and execution as institutional participation in digital assets grew.
Under CrossEx's cross-exchange margin mode, shared assets and unrealised profit and loss across venues are aggregated at account level, so gains on one exchange can be used to support margin requirements on another. The margin pool can be denominated in 10 assets, including USDT, BTC, ETH and USDC.
Each venue continues to match and settle trades independently, while CrossEx consolidates account, margin and risk management through a unified clearing and settlement layer and a separate risk control layer. Assets held with Komainu sit in segregated, bankruptcy-remote wallets.
The service covers spot, margin and USDT-margined perpetual contract trading across more than 12,600 trading pairs, with cross-exchange transfers supported for 15 assets.
The firms said the integration is aimed at quantitative funds, asset managers and market makers, which have typically had to hold separate margin deposits at each exchange they trade on. Further venue integrations are planned for later in the year.
OKX, one of the nine venues, has had its own link to Komainu since June 2023, when it joined Komainu Connect. The two firms expanded that arrangement in November 2024 to cover derivatives as well as spot trading, with profit and loss settled automatically between OKX and clients' collateral wallets at Komainu.
Komainu, which is backed by Laser Digital and Blockstream, is headquartered in Jersey with offices in London, Dubai and Singapore. Its Jersey entity is regulated by the Jersey Financial Services Commission and its Dubai entity by the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority. Gate, founded in 2013, says it serves more than 61 million users.