Citadel Securities invested $400 million in Crypto.com on July 16, marking the first institutional funding round in the exchange’s decade-long history, according to an announcement on Thursday.

The investment valued Crypto.com at $20 billion and signals the direction of capital flows as traditional financial firms move into digital asset infrastructure.

Crypto.com was founded in 2016 and has been privately funded by venture investors since inception. Before the Citadel deal, the company had raised roughly $38 million from firms including DST Global, IDG Capital, and others. For ten years it operated as a pure venture-backed startup in the retail crypto space. The Citadel investment marks a sharp change in both the capital source…