(Bloomberg) — In a sign of Wall Street's renewed interest in crypto markets, StoneX Group Inc. is expanding its digital assets team and building out crypto trading, lending and research services.
Most Read Articles on Bloomberg
The broker-dealer has hired five staff members from Cowen Digital after Toronto-Dominion Bank shut down Cowen's digital assets division following its acquisition of the luxury investment bank last year. Eric Rose, former managing director of Cowen Digital, joined StoneX in October as head of digital asset execution. His four other employees at Cowen Digital, Keith Coyne, David Kroger, Kyrill Firshein and Nolan Aibel, also currently work for the New York-based company.
“My goal was to find a home for us,” Rose said in an interview. “Cowen Digital and StoneX's goals mirror each other. We wanted to provide our clients with facility coverage that provides personalized, personalized care,” he said. said.
The $1.8 trillion cryptocurrency market is showing signs of recovery after a deep downturn marked by scandals and sweeps. Still, Wall Street banks have limited efforts to deal directly with crypto tokens due to regulatory oversight and internal compliance issues. In 2022, Cowen became one of the first investment banks to offer crypto trading to institutional investors, but that effort was scrapped by Toronto-Dominion, which had “no appetite” to touch cryptocurrencies, Rose said. Ta.
Read more: TD's Cowen shuts down digital division focused on cryptocurrencies
Bitcoin rose this week to $50,000 for the first time since December 2021, driven by optimism that last month's U.S. approval of a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund is leading to greater mainstream acceptance. Rose. Bitcoin was trading at about $49,039 as of 1:11 p.m. in New York.
StoneX Digital LLC's expansion builds on a 2022 launch led by Brian Mulcahy, formerly managing director of multi-asset business development at StoneX. We currently offer Bitcoin trading using Etana Custody as a custodian, and we plan to launch non-custodial trading of Bitcoin and Ether soon, allowing customers to use spot, exchange traded derivatives, and ETFs. Now you can execute your trading strategies from one desk.
StoneX Digital plans to launch over-the-counter trading of swaps and derivatives in the second quarter, allowing customers to gain exposure to cryptocurrencies without using custodial services. The company also plans to offer crypto lending services in the second half of this year.
“While the ETF structure certainly provides price appreciation and access to prices, it doesn't really provide access to the ecosystem itself,” Rose said. “Our goal is to expose digital assets to a wider audience.”
This isn't the first time StoneX has hired a former TD Cowen employee. The company recently added several credit staff from the company to expand its non-performing loan sales and trading business.
Read more: StoneX adds to NPL trading team as banks withdraw
(Updated with plan in seventh paragraph. A previous version of this article corrected the spelling of employee name in second paragraph.)
Most Read Articles on Bloomberg Businessweek
©2024 Bloomberg LP
