(Bloomberg) -- Interactive Brokers Group Inc. is stepping deeper into cryptocurrencies with a plan to offer trading services.
“Customers certainly are asking for it, and we expect to be ready to offer it to them by the end of the summer,” Chairman Thomas Peterffy said Wednesday at Piper Sandler Cos.'s global exchange and fintech conference.
Interactive Brokers joins a growing list of payments providers and online broker-dealers that allow their customers to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, including Robinhood Markets Inc., Venmo LLC, PayPal Holdings Inc. and Square Inc.
The announcement from Peterffy's company comes on the same day El Salvador said it formally adopted Bitcoin as legal tender, the first country to do so, after President Nayib Bukele said Congress approved his landmark proposal. The 39-year-old president, whose Twitter profile has a “laser eyes” picture that's popular with devotees of cryptocurrencies, said on Twitter that lawmakers approved the legislation by a supermajority.
Interactive Brokers had previously offered customers a way to access trading in Bitcoin futures. While the move was driven by customer demand, Peterffy said there's still lingering questions about the safety of the industry.
“We will find out more about this when we open for business at the end of the summer,” Peterffy said at the conference.
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