홍준기_CUMBERLAND

Editor's Notes

• #6: Institutional investors have long relied on global custodians such as BNY Mellon, JPMorgan, Northern Trust and State Street Corp. to safeguard their cash and securities. Cryptoassets present a new challenge: purely digital assets are vulnerable to cyberattacks and lost funds are difficult to track, much less recover. The lack of custody and other back office services by reputable financial corporates has constrained institutional investment in digital currencies.   Fidelity Investments has launched a new company, Fidelity Digital Asset Services LLC, for it’s institutional clients that will trade and store digital assets such as bitcoin. Fidelity Digital Asset offers institutional investors such as hedge funds, pensions and academic organizations, the ability to invest into the cryptoasset market with appropriate institutional grade infrastructure. Fidelity Digital Asset founding head Tom Jessop said that the establishment of the company’s digital asset arm can be considered as the recognition by Fidelity of sufficient demand from institutions for cryptoassets. Within less than 24 hours of it’s launch, Fidelity Digital Asset secured Galaxy Digital, a company that similarly aims to facilitate the institutionalization of the cryptoasset market, as it’s first custody client. In May, investment bank Nomura Holdings inc.  joined crypto firms Ledger and Global Advisors to create a custody consortium called Komainu. Just days after Fidelity launched its crypto-centric subsidiary, Goldman Sachs doubled-down on it’s involvement in the industry, joining hands with Galaxy Digital to invest in BitGo, a Palo Alto-based cryptoasset custody startup. BitGo is working to become a qualified custodian in its own right, and to get a state-chartered trust company approved in South Dakota (CEO Mike Belshe interview). “There are a lot of investors where custodianship was the final barrier,”  “Over the next year, the market will come to recognize that custodianship is a solved problem. This will unlock a big wave of capital.” - Samani, a managing partner at Multicoin Capital.
• #7: Short sellers enable markets to function smoothly by providing liquidity and also help keep markets in equilibrium. To short, one needs to borrow. Poloniex (USA) Cryptoasset owners can lend digital assets to margin traders on this platform. This way, users are eligible to have 3 different accounts: for exchange, for margin and for lending. Bitbond (Germany) allows Bitcoin lending at 13-20% interest. Still users are able to invest in USD or EUR. The company has now over 150,000 users and $11.000.000 loan volume. Coincheck (Japan) was one of the earliest to enable cryptoasset lending. Lending Block allows hedge funds, investors and market makers to take cryptoasset loans. Bitfinex : This is another platform that works as an exchange but supports fiat and crypto lending. Since 2016, users can borrow or lend their assets to other interested parties.