Interactive Brokers, one of the first brokerages to offer no-fee trading and the trading of fractional shares, will start trading cryptocurrencies on its platform by the end of the summer, according to Chairman and CEO Thomas Peterffy.
"Customers certainly are asking for [crypto trading] and we expect to be ready to offer it to them by the end of the summer," Peterffy said Wednesday at the Piper Sandler Global Exchange & FinTech Conference, according to CNBC.
The online brokerage currently offers trading in Bitcoin futures as do TD Ameritrade, Kraken and several other crypto-focused firms.
When it launches cryptocurrency trading, Interactive Brokers will be competing against Robinhood, whose platform has had problems with Dogecoin and Ether trading, and, primarily, Coinbase Global, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, which went public in mid-April. Coinbase's stock price has since been falling almost steadily since its initial public offering and is now roughly 40% below its inaugural price.
