State Street, a financial services and asset management firm with $4.3 trillion in assets under management, announced plans for a digital asset platform for institutional clients on Aug. 20.
The platform will offer institutional clients tokenization services, node management and custodial services in collaboration with Taurus, a digital asset infrastructure provider. Following the announcement, Lamine Brahimi, co-founder and managing partner of Taurus SA, told Cointelegraph:
“We believe custody and tokenization are the two faces of the same coin, especially when it comes to performing asset servicing of tokenized securities.”
According to State Street, the leveraging of Taurus’ Taurus-Potect, Taurus-Capital, and Taurus-Explorer products will allow the firm to streamline the process of servicing and issuing digital assets, including “digital securities and fund management vehicles.”
Institutions embracing digital assets
Following the introduction of BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETFs) in the United States, institutional interest in digital assets and digital asset investment vehicles surged.
Related: Institutions not so interested in Bitcoin at $58K, metric shows
Recent data from Bitwise indicates that 66% of institutional Bitcoin investors held or increased their BTC holdings in the second quarter of 2024. More specifically, 44% of those investors increased their exposure to the scarce digital asset, while 22% held their investments without accruing more BTC.
Katalin Tischhauser, head of investment research at Sygnum Bank, recently told Cointelegraph that capital invested into spot Ether (ETH) ETFs might swell to $10 billion in assets under management during the ETF’s first year of live trading.
An unnamed source also told Cointelegraph that Morgan Stanley permitted its network of 15,000 advisers to recommend Bitcoin ETF options to clients beginning on Aug. 7. The source explained that Morgan Stanley was only pitching BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust and Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund.
Inflows into Bitcoin ETFs likewise remain strong, with approximately $11 million flowing into the investment funds on Aug. 15, despite the recent market turbulence of the past week.
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