Institutional Investors Head to Tipping Point for Crypto — Apollo Capital

Henrik Andersson, CIO of crypto fund manager Apollo Capital, believes institutional investors could soon “upend” their conservative stance on cryptocurrencies.

The Melbourne-based crypto fund manager told Cointelegraph that while institutional interest in cryptocurrencies has been slow to pick up, especially in Australia, there are players waiting for the right moment. He said there are many.

Anderson acknowledged that Australia’s major institutional investors, especially retirement funds (or superannuation funds), are still new to the digital asset space.

“It’s still day one. Yes, we’re talking to a number of family offices and smaller boutique institutions in Australia. We don’t have a large industry superfund yet.”

“From their point of view, there is still a lot of education going on.

Apollo Capital is a fund manager focused on providing family offices and institutional investors with access to cryptocurrency investment opportunities. One of the recently launched funds is the Apollo Capital Frontier Fund, which focuses on non-fungible token (NFT) infrastructure, decentralized finance (DeFi), and multi-chain infrastructure.

Asked what it takes to change institutional investor sentiment, Anderson believes this will “flip” when big companies start making bigger moves in the space.

“Nobody wants to be the first in something like this, because if you’re the first and things go wrong, there’s a career risk. It’s going to be the opposite at some point,” Anderson explained.

“If the price goes up at some point, people don’t want to miss it. And if other people are investing, not being invested is a career risk.”

In Australia, several large banking institutions such as ANZ, NAB and Commonwealth Bank (CBA) have already entered the digital asset space.

“Here in Australia, we’ve seen some big banks take an interest in digital assets, so it’s really, really good to see that,” he said.

Notably, CBA was the first major bank in the country to launch a cryptocurrency service through a mobile banking app last year, but has since put the plan on hold, noting that it is still waiting for regulatory clarifications from the new government. .

Some companies are pushing stablecoins and tokenized asset trading.

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Internationally, major banking conglomerates such as Singapore’s DBS Bank continue to grow their digital asset business despite the bear market, and major investment banks are also strengthening their coverage of the crypto space.

“All the major investment banks around the world are writing research reports on the crypto space. Everyone from Goldman Sachs to Morgan Stanley to Citigroup to JP Morgan. There is definitely still interest in the field,” he explained.

“So it looks like things are going very slowly right now, but when sentiment shifts, we see the first players making investments that can change very quickly.”

Earlier this week, Irfan Ahmad, head of Asia-Pacific digital at State Street Digital, the bank’s cryptocurrency arm, said that despite the current crypto winter, institutional investors are turning to blockchain and digital assets. told the Sydney Morning Herald that he maintains interest in