Institutional investors have not been affected by the current crypto winter and have maintained their interest in blockchain and digital assets, according to State Street Megabank.
Speaking to the Australian media outlet Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) on Sunday, Irfan Ahmad, the Asia-Pacific digital lead for State Street Digital bank’s cryptocurrency unit, highlighted that despite extreme volatility during June and July, the firm’s institutional clients have continued to make moves in the sector:
“Over the course of June and July, when things really heated up in terms of activity, we saw that institutional clients didn’t necessarily double down on their investments, but they weren’t deterred from making strategic bets on the stock class itself. active.”
Three cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds (ETFs) from Cosmos Asset Management and 21Shares launched on the Cboe Australia exchange in May, with asset manager Monochrome recently receiving approval to launch the first spot cryptocurrency ETF in August. with a financial services license in the country.
State Street is the fund manager for the Cosmos Purpose Bitcoin Access ETF in particular. Ahmad told SMH that more cryptocurrency products are to be launched in Australia in the “very near future,” but did not outline any specific names.
“Certainly, our customers have been talking to us more pragmatically about how they might be able to launch products, or what our capabilities might be in the future to help them support the launch of those products,” he said.
For its part, the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) and Australian banking giants such as ANZ and NAB have primarily focused on stablecoins and tokenization of traditional assets rather than cryptocurrency investments specifically.
The Commonwealth bank had a short-lived cryptocurrency trading service play that was halted indefinitely in May due to regulatory uncertainty.
Abroad, Big-name US institutions like BlackRock have recently made big bets on cryptocurrencies. Last month, the $10 trillion asset manager partnered with Coinbase to offer institutional clients direct exposure to cryptocurrencies and launched a private bitcoin (BTC) fund.
The global investment bank Citigroup also hired two key executives, Ryan Rugg and David Cunningham, in August as part of the firm’s Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS) unit, which oversees its institutional cryptocurrency offerings.
Rugg signed on to be the global head of digital assets for TTS, with Cunningham joining as director and strategic partner development for digital assets at the company.
Most recently, on September 7, the Swiss digital asset banking platform SEBA Bank launched an institutional Ether (ETH) staking facility to meet growing demand for this yielding asset ahead of the merger.
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