A number of investment funds and cryptocurrency firms are lauding 2019 as the year of institutional investor, 24 hrs before its arrival.
Many see large scale investment being re-examined in 2019 after being scared off by Bitcoin’s December dip. Wall Street notably stood back from the brink prior to the end of the year with Goldman Sachs’ much-publicized plans to open a crypto trading desk called “top-of-the-market-hype thinking” by one New York executive.
Nasdaq is already supporting crypto exchanges and the company is certainly not new to cryptocurrency’s underlying technology, blockchain. Apart from its long-term relationship with blockchain startup, Chain, it has recently announced a collaboration with cryptocurrency exchange Gemini.
Downunder, Henrik Andersson, chief investment officer of Apollo Capital Fund is upbeat on the prospect: “During the coming year we will see a gradual adoption from institutions,” he said, adding “We have the first US university endowments investing in funds” referring to major universities’ announcements that they were to invest in cryptocurrencies.
Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University, Dartmouth College, and the University of North Carolina (UNC), have all made investments from their endowments into at least one crypto fund in 2018.
Another Australian, Every Capital’s director Tom Surman believes that the institutional phase has already begun, adding, “Massive retail offerings and institutional investors are probably the only groups that can meaningfully move the needle on the crypto market cap from here on.”
“The fact that David Swensen [Yale’s chief investment officer] put an investment into bitcoin — with his reputation on the line, his endowment on the line — tells you something…Some of the smartest people in the investing world think it’s a store of value,” said Mike Novogratz, who had been talking up the industry for much of 2018.
Around the world, national banking institutions continue to dabble with the crypto adoption, mainly as a step towards side-stepping internal financial complexities caused by sanctions or recession, but most banks are reticent to commit to launching cryptocurrencies of their own. Most prefer to watch and wait.
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