Galaxy Digital Joins Robinhood, PayPal In NY BitLicense Club — GLXY Stock Still Slides To Lowest Level This Month

• Galaxy Digital announced on Monday that it received a New York BitLicense and Money Transmitter License.
• This would allow the firm to offer regulated crypto trading and custody services to institutional clients across the state.
• The approval places Galaxy among a small group of firms with a BitLicense, alongside Coinbase, Robinhood, Circle, and PayPal.

Galaxy Digital (GLXY) announced on Monday that its subsidiary, GalaxyOne Prime NY, which exclusively serves local New York clients, has obtained the BitLicense and money transmission license from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) for the first time.

With the BitLicense, Galaxy now joins other crypto firms in the same cohort, including Circle (CRCL), Coinbase (COIN), Robinhood (HOOD), and PayPal (PYPL). Galaxy’s license will bring its total number of global compliance licenses to over 50.

However, the optimism did not translate to its share price. Galaxy’s price fell by over 5% during morning trade amid broader weakness in the equity and cryptocurrency markets to its lowest level this month. 

On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment around GLXY stayed in the ‘bearish’ zone, while chatter around it remained at ‘low’ levels over the past day.
One retail trader said they could no longer recommend GLXY until the company "takes better care of shareholders," pointing to Applied Digital (APLD) as a stronger pick, while another predicted that Vanguard would “dump” the stock.

Why Is Galaxy’s BitLicense A Big Deal?

The license qualifies the firm to operate a compliant institutional digital asset business in New York State. All New York State-registered investment advisors, hedge funds, and family offices can access the firm’s full suite of trading and custody services, and the company currently manages $9 billion in client assets.

"Galaxy was built in New York," Novogratz wrote in a post on X, calling the state "the deepest pool of capital in the country, and one where digital assets are no longer sitting at the edge of allocations." The licenses cover Galaxy's full trading and custody platform. 

BitLicense, issued by the U.S. state of New York, is one of the most difficult-to-obtain state-level cryptocurrency licenses across the United States. Since its regulatory framework was launched in 2015, only around 40 companies have been approved to hold the license. 

The move serves the company’s strategy to deeply develop the U.S. institutional-grade cryptocurrency market. Currently, the firm is expanding its partnerships across Wall Street and provides staking infrastructure for the iShares Staked Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHB), which is run by asset management giant BlackRock, cementing its industry status as a core institutional cryptocurrency infrastructure service provider.

Read also: Here's Why Wall Street Thinks The CLARITY Act Could Be A Big Win For Circle And USDC

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