Nomura Holdings Inc. has started offering bitcoin derivatives to clients in Asia after institutional demand for cryptocurrency products increased "significantly” in the past two years.

Japan’s biggest brokerage is offering nondeliverable forwards and nondeliverable options settled in cash, and can now trade bitcoin futures and options, Tim Albers, head of forex structuring in Asia excluding Japan, said in an interview.

Nomura carried out its first digital trade on CME Group Inc.’s platform this week with Cumberland DRW LLC, a market-maker in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. That trade was made despite a recent meltdown in the cryptocurrency sector after the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin triggered a flight from many popular digital tokens.