Galaxy Digital Backs Digital Prime to Bring Institutional Standards to Crypto Lending

Galaxy Digital is doubling down on its view that crypto lending must adopt the operational rigor of traditional finance. The NASDAQ-listed firm said on June 23 it has made a strategic investment in Digital Prime Technologies to help build institutional-grade infrastructure for digital asset lending. The move expands an existing partnership. Galaxy was an inaugural participant in Digital Prime's Tokenet platform, which launched May 14. Financial terms were not disclosed. Tokenet is designed to bring established securities-lending practices into digital assets. Built in collaboration with EquiLend, a longstanding provider of securities finance infrastructure, the platform centers on standardized workflows, institutional-grade risk controls, and end-to-end transparency across the lending lifecycle. Max Bareiss, Galaxy Digital's Head of Lending, has highlighted the gap between traditional market operating standards and the tools available in today's digital asset lending market, a divide that has kept many institutions on the sidelines. Tokenet aims to narrow that gap. The push comes as the sector continues to recover from reputational damage following the 2022 failures of Genesis, BlockFi, Celsius, and Voyager, which erased billions in customer funds and deepened institutional skepticism. Those collapses underscored issues widely cited across the industry: weak risk management, limited transparency, and a lack of the guardrails common in traditional finance. EquiLend's involvement adds credibility, given its more than two decades of experience supporting traditional securities lending. The partnership signals that established financial technology providers increasingly view digital asset lending as a meaningful growth market. For Galaxy, the investment aligns with its broader buildout of institutional services. Lending remains among the higher-margin businesses in finance, and an ownership stake in the underlying infrastructure supports a more vertically integrated model in which Galaxy can use the platform while also benefiting from its expansion. With deal size undisclosed, the most important takeaway is the decision to invest. A public, NASDAQ-listed firm backing lending infrastructure built on traditional standards offers a signal about the direction of the institutional crypto market.