One of the world’s largest asset managers Apollo Global Management is trying to hold crypto custody through a partnership with Anchorage Digital, a digital asset platform. With more than $500 billion under management, Apollo Global is making this move for its institutional customers.
And the first federally chartered digital asset bank in the US, Anchorage, will custody a significant portion of Apollo’s crypto portfolio. They chose Anchorage as their partner because they were impressed by its features.
In a statement on Monday, Adam Eling, the COO of Apollo Global, said that they were drawn to working with Anchorage given their commitment to operating under strict regulatory oversight, their ease of use for asset managers to hold digital tokens, and their strong emphasis on security and segregation of client assets.
Adam also indicated that their company would discover new ways to apply blockchain technology to their business. It’s not the first move from a national leader in asset management toward crypto custody, but other companies also hold crypto custody. For example, BlackRock partnered with Coinbase for Bitcoin trading and custody in August. Moreover, this month, Fidelity introduced Ethereum trading to institutional investors.
Apollo Global appointed former JPMorgan crypto lead Christine Moy as its Head of Digital Assets in April. Last month, at the SALT conference, Christine said that Apollo is looking to be a real-world practitioner of blockchain technology. Moreover, she said that Apollo is interested in putting real-world assets on-chain.
This partnership is taking place in a crypto-down year for both crypto prices and trading activity, which means that the interest in digital assets is still intact. Diogo Mónica, the president of Anchorage, said that Institutions are taking a long-term approach to crypto. However, he did not share information about which digital assets it would take custody of on Apollo’s behalf. But he indicated that Apollo and other institutional partners are here to stay.
About their partnership with Apollo, Diogo said that Apollo is a leader in the alternatives industry, so their use of Anchorage’s custody platform is incredibly validating.
