Barclays, Goldman Sachs Invest in UK Crypto Platfo
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Barclays and Goldman Sachs have made investments into Elwood Technologies, a crypto trading platform founded by Alan Howard. Howard is a British billionaire who started the platform as a way to manage his own interests in the cryptocurrency space.
The two banks’ investment came together with additional investments by Dawn Capital, a venture capital firm, as well as Commerzbank (a German lender) and Galaxy Digital. Galaxy Digital is owned by Mike Novogratz, an American billionaire.
This particular funding round worth $70 million gave Elwood Technologies a market valuation of $500 million. The firm has been in existence for five years.
While the leading 500 digital assets have seen their value plunge by more than 50% since their peak in 2021, Elwood believes that many financial institutions, including family investment offices, hedge funds and traditional banks, will keep up their momentum of investing in crypto assets. It is these institutional investors that Elwood Technologies is hoping to attract as clients.
Originally, Elwood provided crypto asset management services. However, the company pivoted in 2020 and is now focused on becoming a provider of software to institutions interested in investing in the cryptocurrency space.
The platform offered by Elwood is in the same category as that of Bloomberg or the Aladdin management system provided by BlackRock. Elwood’s platform can be plugged into any trading software owned by a client, and those clients can then better manage their crypto portfolios and conduct trading activity with real-time feedback about how each trade is impacting the portfolio.
While speaking about this investment in Elwood, Goldman Sachs’ chief of digital assets said that the American bank’s commitment to investing in digital assets was demonstrated by the money it put into Elwood.
Elwood CEO James Stickland said that the investment made by the entities in this funding round showed that financial institutions had faith that crypto was here to stay. He wasn’t fazed by the fact that this investment was completed just as Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, had fallen below $30,000. Stickland commented that the banks involved weren’t interested in making a hefty profit within in a short time. Rather, their outlook was long term, and they had faith in the platform in which they had invested.
This investment round doesn’t alter the status of Howard as the majority owner of Elwood Technologies. The UK billionaire is notable for being one of the wealthiest people in the UK to enter the crypto space in a big way.
As more institutional investors enter the cryptocurrency and blockchain space, the appeal of sector players such as GreenBox POS (NASDAQ: GBOX) will increase due to the growing vote of confidence in the new technologies championed by these firms.
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