$ 20 billion in cryptocurrency in custody: Coinbase sees ‘capital explosion’ from institutional investors

Coinbase revealed that it had “a capital explosion coming”. His assets in custody they currently total $ 20 billion, of which $ 14 billion has been accumulated since April. Coinbase highlights a number of bullish events that “really unleashed” a wave of institutional adoption.

Coinbase has $ 20 billion in custody

Coinbase’s head of institutional coverage Brett Tejpaul spoke about institutional demand for bitcoin in an interview with Heidrick & Struggles International, released on Friday.

Tejpaul has 25 years of experience in sales and trading, including almost 17 in Barclays and nine in JPMorgan. He explained that he joined Coinbase six months ago and is now “responsible for growing institutional adoption of cryptocurrency, through sales, trading, custody and Prime.” Prime is Coinbase’s services for institutional clients, including asset managers, hedge funds and VCs.

“It’s a phenomenal time for cryptocurrencies … Sometimes timing is everything,” said Tejpaul. “We’ve had an explosion of activity,” he added, elaborating:

I joined in April this year, at that time our assets, institutional assets under custody were $ 6 billion, today we are over $ 20 billion, so more than three times.

“In early summer, we acquired an execution platform called Tagomi and brought with us overnight, it radically transformed our ability to cater to institutional clients who wish to use intelligent order routing and algorithmic execution,” so the statistic is that our trading volumes are 20 times what they were at the beginning of the year, “continued Tejpaul.

“We are now measuring the new capital going into cryptocurrency, mainly allocated to bitcoin in billions,” he described, noting:

Week after week after week, we had an explosion of capital coming.

Tejpaul said Coinbase has “updated” its banking partners and Revision: JPMorgan and Deloitte. “Both of these companies went through a one to two year due diligence period to make sure we had the right KYC, AML and the fact that we act ourselves and act like a bank and have decided to be regulated, and therefore we are one. safe ride “.

It then highlighted recent bullish events in the crypto space, starting with famed hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones, who said in May that he had invested around 2% of his portfolio in bitcoin. In October, Jones said he saw many benefits for bitcoin.

Jones’s decision “was important because it served as a business card for other traditional macro companies, which are thinking of bitcoin as a store of value, bitcoin as a potential tail risk hedge for the portfolio,” explained Tejpaul, adding:

We have seen an incredible wave of institutions following Paul’s example.

He also mentioned Nasdaq-listed Microstrategy which invested $ 425 million in bitcoin and made cryptocurrency its main Treasury reserve asset. CEO Michael Saylor has become a bitcoin bull, personally investing $ 240 million in BTC.

Other notable hedge fund managers who have made bullish statements on bitcoin include Bill Miller, who said every major bank will eventually have exposure to bitcoin, and Stan Druckenmiller, who called bitcoin an attractive store of value that could beat gold.

Tejpaul also shared what a typical day is like for him on the podcast. “At 9:30 am, I received five different institutional clients called to invest over $ 100 million each.” He explained that people sitting on the sidelines “are now looking at major banks, major accounting firms, major hedge funds, major endowments and now Paypal entering this space,” concluding:

It really sparked a second wave of institutional adoptions.

What do you think of institutional investors invading cryptocurrencies? Let us know in the comments section below.

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