With more and more institutions looking into dabbling with the crypto space, multinational financial services firm Nasdaq has also reportedly started preparations in order to offer digital asset custody services to its institutional clients. Earlier this week, Nasdaq announced the launch of “Nasdaq Digital Assets”. According to the official report, this new business is something that will power the digital asset ecosystem. The report also states, ‘The launch underpins Nasdaq’s ambition to advance and help facilitate broader institutional participation in digital assets by providing trusted and institutional-grade solutions focused on enhanced custody, liquidity, and integrity.’
As stated in the Bloomberg report, ‘the company has created a new group focusing on digital assets and will start by offering Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) custody services for institutions. The firm also onboarded Ira Auerbach, who previously led prime broker services at crypto exchange Gemini, as the head of its new digital assets division.’
Yesterday’s announcement underpins @Nasdaq’s ambition to advance and help facilitate broader institutional participation in digital assets.
To deliver on that opportunity, Nasdaq Digital Assets will provide trusted and institutional-grade solutions: https://t.co/OH0YkDDXBh pic.twitter.com/Knf3QDc3xI
— Nasdaq (@Nasdaq) September 21, 2022
According to Adena Friedman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Nasdaq, “Nasdaq Digital Assets builds upon the successful solutions we have introduced in recent years to serve the digital assets ecosystem, including marketplace technology for digital asset exchanges, crypto-native anti-financial crime offerings, and crypto-related index solutions for tradable products. The technology that underpins the digital asset ecosystem has the potential to transform markets over the long term. To deliver on that opportunity, our focus will be to provide institutional-grade solutions that bring greater liquidity, integrity, and transparency to support the evolution.”
This recent announcement from Nasdaq is not a shocker to the crypto community as the financial institution has already been prepping itself since the beginning of the year 2022. Back in May, Nasdaq partnered with the Brazillian firm XP in order to create a digital asset exchange called XTAGE, which is scheduled to launch in 2022. Roland Chai, an executive at Nasdaq, has said that this partnership with XP would help in bringing new opportunities to investors and other companies! According to the CoinTelegraph report, Lucas Rabechini, director of financial products at XP commented, ‘The creation of XTAGE represents an important milestone in advancing the digital asset market and our ability to offer investors greater access to the digital asset ecosystem. Through the technology partnership with Nasdaq, we are confident that XP will operate on an innovative and robust infrastructure.’
With one of the largest crypto networks changing its consensus from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake; yes the Ethereum Merge; is going to influence institutions to open doors and explore the crypto space, according to BitMEX CEO Alexander Höptner.
With such an influential institution like Nasdaq expanding its businesses to include digital assets, many more institutions will now have the trust factor working along with the FOMO of missing out on the newer advancements. While speaking with CoinTelegraph, an executive at the fund manager Apollo Capital, Henrik Andersson highlighted that there will be a time when people won’t want to miss out and that it will become a “career risk not to be invested.”
Source: CoinTelegraph, Nasdaq, Financial Times