BlackRock and Coinbase announced Thursday a partnership that will allow institutional clients of the world’s largest asset manager to buy bitcoins. A breath of fresh air for a cryptocurrency exchange platform that has been struggling for months.
It’s a landmark partnership announced Thursday between the world’s largest asset management company, BlackRock, and the bitcoin platform, Coinbase. The two companies will indeed join forces to enable the asset manager’s institutional clients to buy bitcoins through Alladin, a software suite developed by Blackrock for institutions. Very advanced in risk analysis, especially enabling institutional clients of asset managers to better monitor their operations.
“(…) We’re announcing that Coinbase has partnered with BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, to provide institutional clients of Aladdin, BlackRock’s end-to-end investment management platform, with direct access to cryptocurrency, starting with bitcoin, through a connection to Coinbase Prime -om,” Coinbase said in a statement released Thursday.
On Aladdin, these investors will therefore be able to buy cryptocurrencies through Coinbase and see how well the bitcoin exposure fits into their overall portfolio.
Share price on the rise
This is a masterstroke for Coinbase. After the announcement of this partnership on Thursday, the action of the cryptocurrency exchange platform started on Wall Street. On the day, the Coinbase title jumped about 15% to $92.66 at the start of the New York session.
Blackrock’s institutional clients (banks, cash managers, hedge funds, etc.) who already used Coinbase will now be able to access the bitcoin trading platform’s Prime professional service. They can get there through Aladdin, a software suite developed by Blackrock that offers portfolio management tools for institutions.
Coinbase in turmoil since the beginning of the year
The partnership with Coinbase offers a breath of fresh air to the platform, whose shares have fallen nearly 60% since the start of the year, hit hard by the cryptocurrency market crash.
Worried about inflation, rising interest rates and the risk of a recession, investors are turning away from assets that are considered risky and volatile, including bitcoin. In this difficult context, Coinbase announced in mid-June the loss of 18% of its workforce, i.e. around 1,100 positions.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last month charged former company officials with wire fraud and insider trading, a first in the virtual currency sector.
