Despite a market downturn, institutional and venture capital pour into cryptocurrency

A London-based venture capital company named Northzone has secured €1 billion (about $1 billion) to create a fund that would concentrate on crypto and fintech startups, marking one of the biggest forays into the cryptocurrency field recently.

Partner at Northzone Wendy Xiao Schadeck stated that the fund views the digital assets sector as its “key sector” for them. Additionally, she said, “We’re keeping an absolutely open mind for the next generation of innovators to establish entirely new categories.”

The organisation that has already made investments in businesses like Spotify and Klarna as well as web3 and DeFi startups including Sunscreen, Gro, and Magic Labs, plans to support businesses from their earliest phases up until their initial public offerings.

History of crypto at Fidelity
One of the most renowned U.S. stockbrokers, Fidelity Investments, is reportedly exploring legalising Bitcoin trading for individual investors. Although it hasn’t been formally announced to clients yet, Fidelity intends to offer the service to the more than 34.3 million brokerage accounts it now manages.

“A small bird in my ear informed me that Fidelity is going to shift their retail clients into cryptocurrency soon enough. Let’s hope the bird is correct. Thus, he remarked, “We are seeing this institutional march in New York at the SALT Conference.

Mike Novogratz, the CEO of Galaxy Digital, a platform for digital banking and cryptocurrency services, made a suggestion that Fidelity would soon use its services.

By providing a Bitcoin trading service to their institutional investors and hedge funds in 2018, Fidelity “got” into bitcoin. It started offering 401(k) retirement plans to corporate clients earlier this year.

JPMorgan & Co.
In a $20 million funding round for a startup providing infrastructure for tokenized assets called Ownera, JPMorgan teamed forces with a private asset management company called LRC Group.

Ownera aims to connect tokenized platforms and conventional financial institutions. Ownera is an open-source protocol that facilitates the tokenization of assets on either public or private blockchain. One of the first significant American banks to offer cryptocurrency trading to its customers was JPMorgan last year. The company started recommending cryptocurrency funds to their wealth management clients and raised about $45 million to provide the service through two distinct funds.

Securitize and KKR
Securitize, a digital asset security company based in San Francisco, has become the first business to offer tokenized exposure to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., or KKR, a major worldwide investment fund. The Securitize fund is run by Securitize Capital, the company’s division for managing digital assets, which will use the Avalanche public blockchain to provide exposure to KKR’s Health Care Strategic Growth Fund II (“HCSG II”).

The blockchain is used by the digital asset security platform to raise money, create tokenized assets, bring in investors, and offer secondary trading. Managing Director and Co-Head of U.S. Private Wealth at KKR, Dan Parant, explains why the multinational fund wants to test blockchain: Blockchain technology has the potential to play a significant role in the development of private markets since it has the power to reduce operational inefficiencies and make investing easier for individual investors.

Markets EDX
A marketplace called EDXM has launched and is supported by well-known names in the finance sector like Virtu Financial, Charles Schwab, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Citadel Securities. EDXM is a platform that enables the trading of digital assets through dependable middlemen and is accessible to institutional and ordinary investors in the United States. MEMX technology, a customer-focused market operator established in 2019, will power the platform.

The platform’s representatives claim that they have enormous plans for EDXM’s future and that more important stakeholders will soon join the board. We anticipate welcoming more participants to the exchange, which will encourage ongoing trading in this significant asset class and establish a positive feedback loop of continuously improved liquidity and efficiency backed by MEMX’s technology, according to Jamil Nazarali, chief executive officer of EDX Markets.

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