It has been reported that most institutional investors seem to be pretty unfazed by the current crypto winter. They have also maintained their enthusiasm toward digital assets and blockchain, as mentioned by megabank State Street. This was reported by Sydney Morning Herald on the 11th of September, where Irfan Ahmed, the Asia Pacific digital lead for the bank’s crypto unit State Street Digital, stated that despite the extreme volatility that was present throughout the months of June and July, the institutional clients of the firm have never stopped making major moves in the industry.
Institutional Investors Are Moving Forward Despite Crypto Winter
Three separate crypto exchange-traded funds from Cosmos Asset Management and 21Shares decided to get on the Cboe Australia Exchange back in May, while Monochrome– a famous asset manager and institutional investor- recently came across some much-needed approval that would launch the first Australian financial services licensed spot crypto ETF in August.
For those who are unaware, State Street is the biggest fund administrator for the Cosmos Purpose Bitcoin Access ETF in particular. In his interview, Ahmad mentioned that Australia could potentially see a lot more product launches in the near future- but he didn’t mention any specific names to look out for.
At the same time, the Australian Securities Exchange and several other banking giants like the NAB and the ANZ have been strictly focused on traditional asset tokenization, as well as stablecoins, rather than focusing on crypto investments specifically- despite institutional investors throughout the world establishing their priorities in cryptocurrency.
The Commonwealth bank also saw a short-lived crypto trading service play, similar to being an institutional investor, that was indefinitely halted back in May due to uncertainty in the regulatory policies. Citigroup, a global investment bank, has also hired a couple of key executives as a part of the Treasury and Trade Solutions of the firm which would be overseeing the institutional crypto offerings.
