The world’s top 15 investment institutions are gambling cryptocurrencies, and these years of investment are more lively.

After the Singaporeans, the enthusiasm of the local tyrants for the currency circle has gradually been provoked. Mubadala Investment Capital, headquartered in Abu Dhabi, has opened its arms to the cryptocurrency exchange.

It is not easy for a sovereign wealth fund with a conservative investment style to invest in the rising cryptocurrency industry. The world's top 10 sovereign wealth funds, and only two of Singapore (Singapore Government Investment Corporation, Temasek Holdings) have invested in the blockchain industry.

Most of the capital familiar to the blockchain industry comes from private wealth companies and industrial capital, including the familiar Pantera Capital, A16Z, Union Square Ventures, and Facebook, IBM, Tencent and more. In addition, traditional financial institutions represented by Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Fidelity Investment, etc. are also gearing up.

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A game of capital and currency chase seems to be getting better.

"Conservative money" sprinkled into cryptocurrency, favorite investment exchange

A few days ago, as the 13th largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, Muubadara’s investment in cryptocurrency exchange MidChains was 7-digit US dollars, mainly helping the latter to launch Abu Dhabi’s local digital currency trading platform by the end of 2019. And operate the storage, calculation, clearing, etc. of the encrypted assets.

This is the first time that Mubadala has invested in the blockchain sector and is one of its initiatives to increase investment in cutting-edge technology. The two sides lasted for about a year before finally hitting the agreement. Basil al-Askari, CEO of MidChains, said that benefiting from the cryptocurrency regulatory framework of the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), sovereign wealth funds are assured of investment.

The source of funds for sovereign wealth funds is the state's fiscal surplus, foreign exchange reserves, natural resource export surplus, etc., which are generally managed by specialized government investment institutions. This requires the investment style of sovereign wealth funds to be very conservative and mainly to make long-term investments. Scallions statistics found that the world's top 10 sovereign wealth funds, only two from Singapore (Singapore government investment company GIC, Temasek Holdings Temasek) once invested in the blockchain industry, and also invested in the exchange.

In February of this year, Singapore government investment company GIC was transferred to the US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase; Singapore's other sovereign wealth fund, Temasek's Xiangfeng Investment, announced a strategic investment in the currency at the end of last year. . In addition, Temasek also showed a US$50 million holding of a 0.35% stake in Bitcoin B+ round financing.

It is worth mentioning that global sovereign wealth funds are paying more attention to black technology. The "2018 Sovereign Wealth Fund" report launched by IE University of Spain and the Spanish Investment Promotion Agency shows that science and technology projects have become the "new darling" of sovereign funds. In 2018, the world's largest investment in sovereign fund investment was in the technology industry. Global sovereign funds have participated in 77 rounds of technology financing, with an average of more than one round per week. According to industry, biotechnology, financial technology, travel, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and cloud computing are the sectors that attract the most investment from sovereign funds. Blockchain is also accelerating.

"Smart money" layout everywhere but very careful

In addition to attracting money from sovereign wealth funds, cryptocurrencies are also very eager for "smart money" represented by Wall Street. At present, the total market value of the global cryptocurrency market is about $300 billion, compared to the total market value of the three exchanges in the US stock market, which is as high as $44 trillion. A common view in the market is that even if traditional institutional investors only allocate 1% of their assets as cryptocurrency assets, it means huge wealth effects and investment opportunities.

Goldman Sachs , a top investment bank on Wall Street, said last month that it has launched a new encryption business in its incubator and hopes to “go farther than ever before” in terms of digital assets. In the list of Goldman Sachs new recruitment requirements, “Digital Asset Project Manager” is listed. The new business will be separated from the cryptocurrency derivatives trading business to explore new digital asset opportunities for the bank.

Previously, Goldman's exploration of cryptocurrency was not successful: the cryptocurrency trading platform was not established, and public trading of Bitcoin derivatives and futures was abandoned, instead of bulk trading; based on Ethereum futures non-deliverable forwards Contracts (NDF) are not very attractive.

At the end of June, JPMorgan Chase began to build momentum for its "Morgancoin". JPMorgan Chase is the first large bank in the United States to announce the official issuance of digital currency. According to the relevant disclosure, this is an important project centered on the international settlement field by JP Morgan Chase. As a digital currency for instant settlement, the model is similar to virtual currency using DLT technology.

Fidelity invests in a wider range of contacts in the blockchain world. In May of this year, Fidelity’s office was exposed to a room filled with bitcoin mining machines. This is not the first time that Fidelity has been involved in Bitcoin mining. Previously, when recording with Crypto podcast host Laura Shin, Tom Jessop, head of digital assets at Fidelity, said that as early as 2015, the company's CEO, Abigail Johnson, tapped bitcoin in his office. In addition, Jessop said that a research and development department of the company has even tested the internal bitcoin payment network. Since then, Fidelity has announced the launch of an encrypted hosting service and plans to launch Bitcoin trading services, only for Bitcoin.

Fidelity said that it began researching BTC as early as 2014. It has conducted BTC use trials in its in-house restaurants and started bitcoin mining in 2015, and obtained hundreds of BTCs. Last month, Fidelity's Digital Asset Services (FDAS) was exposed to submit a trust service license application to the New York Financial Services Department (NYDFS). It is reported that the approval time of the New York Financial Services Department is usually about half a year. Once successfully approved, Fidelity can provide New York investors with encrypted asset hosting services such as Bitcoin.

BlackRock is an old rival to Fidelity Investments in the asset management arena. As early as July 2018, there were media reports that a working group dedicated to cryptocurrency and blockchain had been formed. BlackRock’s move surprised the industry at the time. In October 2017, BlackRock CEO Laurence Fink slammed bitcoin and called it a “money laundering tool”. But in less than a year, they changed their minds.

In 2019, BlackRock once again revealed the importance of encrypting assets. In April 2019, BlackRock stated that it would undertake large-scale management reforms, some of which were to ensure that the organization focused on investing in alternative assets. In addition, BlackRock hired former Ripple marketing executive Robbie Mitchnick to join his digital currency team.

Source: Shallot blockchain

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