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Digital Asset Custody is the Key Consideration for Institutions When Investing in Crypto and Digital Assets

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New research from London-based Nickel Digital Asset Management (Nickel), Europe’s largest regulated and award-winning digital assets hedge fund manager founded by senior traders and investment professionals formerly from major financial institutions including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, reveals concerns over security are the biggest obstacle preventing institutional investors and wealth managers from investing in crypto and digital assets.

A survey of institutional investors and wealth managers, who collectively manage around $108.4 billion in assets, revealed that 79% cited asset security as one of the top three reasons for not investing in cryptocurrencies and digital assets. This was followed by 67% who said price volatility, 56% who cited market cap, and 49% who said the regulatory environment. Further 12% included the carbon footprint from Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in their top three reasons for not investing.

Gary Gensler, the chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission has called on Congress to provide the agency with more authority to police cryptocurrency trading, lending, and platforms and 76% of the professional investors interviewed believe this will be granted next year. If the SEC is granted these extra powers, 73% of institutional investors and wealth managers believe this will have a positive impact on the price of crypto and digital assets – 32% believe it will have a very positive effect.

Henry Howell, Head of Business Development at Nickel Digital, commented: “Our research shows that institutional investors have correctly identified custody and security as a critical differentiator to this unique asset class. At Nickel Digital, we have helped drive the innovation and institutional-grade solutions that are paramount to the largest investors in the world. As a result, we are seeing more institutional investors investing in digital assets for the first time, and those that already have exposure are making further allocations.”

Nickel Digital’s infrastructure is designed to offer various access points to the crypto market

Nickel currently has four funds investing in the digital asset space. Its market-neutral Digital Asset Arbitrage Fund pursues an absolute return strategy without expressing directional views on the underlying crypto assets market. It exploits market inefficiencies and price dislocations, and harnesses swings of volatility to deliver consistent positive returns within a strictly defined risk management framework. The fund delivered over 97% of positive months since inception over 2.5 years ago, with volatility of 3.5% and Sharpe of 3.7.

Diversified Alpha Fund is a non-directional multi-strategy fund which wraps a portfolio of attractive but hard-to-access and capacity-constrained strategies into a single, investible fund. Among the strategies it deploys are high-frequency market making, statistical arbitrage, relative value, volatility arbitrage, and trend following. The fund protected capital well at the time of distress in May 2021, delivering a record monthly performance of +4.7% despite the underlying market going through one of the strongest corrections in recent years. It runs with volatility of 7.5% and Sharpe of 3.

DeFi Liquid Venture Fund is designed to capture the growth potential of the broader digital assets space outside Bitcoin, spotting early winners in Layer 1 protocols and Decentralised Finance, the area of greatest financial innovation. The fund is an actively managed research-driven vehicle aiming at identifying early winners and capturing structural expansion of this space. Since its inception, it has outperformance bitcoin by a double-digit margin, highlighting greater innovation originated in the Defi space.

Nickel’s Digital Gold Institutional Fund, a Bitcoin tracker, provides secure, efficient, transparent, and liquid access to physically allocated Bitcoin. It delivers institutional-grade precision of trade execution, trades 7 days a week and offers one of the industry’s lowest expense ratios.

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Bitcoin

Bitcoin Holds Above $67,000 Amid Trump Win Bets

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Bitcoin is holding above $67,000 after yesterday’s correction after breaching the $69,000 level and rising to its highest level since late July.

Yesterday’s correction comes after an upward trend that investors are pushing to continue in light of a set of supporting factors, whether from the massive inflows into cryptoinvestment products or from more bets on Donald Trump winning the White House again.

Cryptocurrency investment products recorded massive inflows last week, reaching $2.2 billion, which represents the highest level since last July, with Bitcoin accounting for most of these flows that went to US spot ETFs, according to CoinShares. Net flows to these funds amounted to more than $294 million yesterday alone, according to SoSo Value.

This comes with two weeks left until the US presidential election. While the Polymarket betting market indicates that Republican candidate Trump is likely to win with a 63% probability, the betting site has sparked controversy over who is behind the significant increase in Trump bets. In contrast to Polymarket’s results, the poll average indicates that Democratic candidate Kamala Harris is ahead by 48.2% compared to 46.4% for Trump, according to FiveThirtyEight.

While this disparity and fluctuation in polls and predictions is likely to keep cryptocurrencies vulnerable to sharp volatility in the coming days, as the identity of the winner of the White House presidency might shape the future of the industry.

However, the futures market is presenting a mixed story and is questioning the sustainability of Bitcoin’s bullish trend. Bitcoin futures open interest regained its record level of more than $40 billion yesterday, according to CoinGlass, despite the price correction. This correction only resulted in a very small liquidation of the long positions of about $28 million yesterday.

Of that $40 billion, $12.5 billion was on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), which also represents a new record high for Bitcoin futures on the US’s largest futures exchange. This reflects the increasing involvement of institutional investors in driving price action.

What is concerning is the decline in the long/short ratio from 1.04 on Sunday to 0.94 today, which may reflect increasing bearish bets in futures market, which in turn may indicate a possible reversal of the bullish trend and a renewal of yesterday’s losses soon.

Written by Samer Hasn, Senior Market Analyst at XS

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Cryptocurrency

Binance Expands Crypto Access in West and Central Africa With Mobile Money Integration

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Binance, the world’s leading blockchain and cryptocurrency infrastructure provider continues to drive innovation and expand access to cryptocurrency in Africa, now allowing users in Benin, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Togo and Senegal to purchase crypto directly through mobile money payments enabled through local partnerships. 

This new functionality further strengthens Binance’s commitment to providing simple and secure access to cryptocurrency for users across the continent, reinforcing the platform’s vision of financial inclusion.

Samantha Fuller, Spokeswoman for Binance says “We remain focused on advancing financial inclusion and delivering user-friendly solutions for crypto adoption across Africa. This expansion into West and Central Africa is a significant step in our mission to increase crypto adoption, providing millions of people with more direct access to the global digital economy”.

This new service currently supports only BUY transactions, further simplifying the entry point for new crypto users in these regions, while providing them with a reliable and secure platform to acquire digital assets.

How to buy crypto:

  1. Log in to your Binance app and select [Add Funds] from the homepage.
  2. Choose your local fiat currency you wish to use by selecting the currency in the top-right column.
  3. Follow the instructions to complete your crypto purchase.

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Bitcoin

Bitcoin Fails to Hold $63,000 Amid Weak Risk Appetite, Growing Selling Pressure

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Bitcoin remains below $63,000 after failing to hold above it over the past two days while Ethereum is also struggling to reclaim $2,440.

The crypto market has been trading sideways since the beginning of this week.

The cautious moves in the crypto market come amid uncertainty over a range of economic and political factors in the US and geopolitics in the Middle East.

Add to that the potential selling pressure that the US government may exert with its permission to sell around 70,000 Bitcoin.

The Supreme Court has allowed the US Marshals Service to proceed with the sale of 69,370 Bitcoins seized from the Silk Road online store, which would be the largest sale of its kind in history. While the nature and pace of this selling is not yet known, it will not necessarily put downward pressure on prices if it is done in over-the-counter (OTC)
transactions, according to Beincrypto.

As for the economic side, in light of the surprise labor market numbers that were much better than expected and Jerome Powell’s hawkish speech, hopes for a rapid continuation of interest rate cuts this year have diminished. While the relatively high rates remain for a longer period and the continued rise in Treasury bond yields will weaken appetite for risky assets in general, including cryptocurrencies.

Whereas, after the hypothesis of a half-percentage point cut at the next November meeting was the most likely, it has now become excluded in the Fed Fund futures market, and the probability of a quarter-percentage point cut has become 87%, according to the CME FedWatch Tool. The remaining 13% is for the possibility of keeping current rates unchanged.

The state of caution may also prevail in the markets in the coming weeks, as we anticipate the presidential elections in the United States, which will begin next month. While the outcome of these elections could cause a structural shift in the crypto industry.

Far away, in the Middle East, markets are still anticipating the nature of the expected escalation in the region, especially regarding the nature of the Israeli response to the unprecedented attack from Iran and the nature of the counter-response. While one of the most prominent scenarios is targeting energy facilities, which would bring inflation back to the forefront, which in turn may require central banks to keep interest rates high.

 

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