Standard Chartered’s fintech and investment arm, SC Ventures, has made a strategic investment in GSR, the crypto market maker that has recently been expanding into other token financial services.

With the investment, SC Ventures has become the first external strategic shareholder for GSR since its founding in 2013, according to an announcement on Tuesday.

"We are excited to welcome SC Ventures as a strategic investor and partner," GSR CEO Xin Song said in a statement. "Institutional digital asset markets are maturing rapidly, and the firms best positioned to lead will be those that combine deep capital markets expertise with trusted banking infrastructure. This partnership brings those strengths together, with tokenisation as a key starting point."

The firms declined to disclose the size of the investment when asked by The Block.

The move deepens a relationship between GSR and SC Ventures struck last month, when GSR invested in the SC Ventures-backed tokenization platform Libeara. That investment was a key part of GSR’s strategy to develop its crypto capital markets operations, with Libeara a route for GSR clients to tokenize their assets. GSR’s token lifecycle management business was greatly expanded following its acquisitions of Autonomous and Architech earlier this year.

GSR is now positioning itself as one of the few firms that can offer end-to-end support for token launches, from pre-launch strategizing to post-launch market making, as well as other capital markets services.

Similarly, both GSR and Libeara play a part in Standard Chartered’s plan to build out crypto prime brokerage. Together, the firms are looking "to develop robust, compliant, and scalable market infrastructure," according to the announcement.

"The next phase of the digital asset evolution will be defined by the strength of infrastructure. Our investment in GSR reinforces our focus on building institutional ecosystems that can support deeper liquidity and more resilient market activity," SC Ventures CEO Alex Manson said.

Standard Chartered has significant crypto industry ties, including through its Zodia custody and trading subsidiary, which it may look to fully absorb. Bloomberg reported that SC Ventures is looking to launch a $250 million digital asset services fund this year.

Of note, the London-based bank’s SC Ventures unit also recently invested in Keyrock, a crypto asset manager, market maker, and trading infrastructure provider.

In addition to the token lifecycle management, GSR has also taken the plunge into ETF issuance in recent weeks. Its first fund, the GSR Crypto Core3 ETF, has the distinction of being the first actively-managed multi-asset crypto fund with staking enabled.