Wealth Managers and VCs Help Drive Institutional Crypto Adoption - Wave Financial execs

"Things are much more encouraging, although it's clearly a difficult time," said Mike Jones, business development manager at Wave Financial.< /p> Interview

Two executives from Wave Financial, an asset management firm offering bespoke strategies to high net worth individuals and entities, reported seeing an increase in institutional demand for crypto products amid the bear market.

Speaking to Cointelegraph at the Blockchain Futurist Conference in Toronto on Wednesday, Wave Financial head of business development Mike Jones said institutional investment in crypto could be driven by the high end of companies Wealth management companies including Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs are looking to find ways to allow their clients to be exposed to the space. Jones cited the example of BlackRock's partnership with Coinbase on August 4, a move that will give users of asset manager Aladdin's institutional investment management platform access to crypto trading, custody, prime and reporting brokerage.

As well as wealth managers, the Wave executive said venture capital could experience "strong growth", in part due to demand for innovative investment vehicles. Wave Financial's investment and venture capitalist Gerard Berile added that VCs giving clients exposure to crypto without going through centralized exchanges and still dealing in large-scale volume have been a "net positive for the industry." 'industry as a whole'.

"On the corporate side, the bear market has been somewhat positive," Berile said. “Over the last year, year and a half, we have seen the valuations of many different companies get incredibly high – a little foamy, you might say. Over the past six months or so, we've seen company valuations return to somewhat more realistic valuations, and now has become the perfect time to start allocating capital."