Since April, United States investment bank Morgan Stanley has doubled its total number of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) shares owned, according to a report filed with the SEC on Sept. 27. Also, investment management giant Ark Invest — helmed by CEO and crypto bull Cathie Wood — acquired more than 450,000 GBTC shares , bringing its total to a sizable 8.3 million GBTC shares.
Luuk Strijers, chief commercial officer for crypto options exchange Deribit, highlighted that large banks like Morgan Stanley, Citi and Goldman Sachs are starting to offer their clients a wide array of digital assets.
Elena Sinelnikova, co-founder and CEO of Ethereum layer-two rollup platform Metis, told Cointelegraph that more often than not, retail investors ignore periods of consolidation, directing their attention to the crypto industry only when the market is pumping. On the other hand, institutional investors know that the best time to stack up is when the market drifts lower and/or stands still, suggesting a more long-term outlook on their part. She said:
“We've been through enough market cycles to know that the type of pullback we've seen over the past few months often comes right before a big uptrend. While no one can predict the future (in crypto or otherwise), institutions are using this quiet period to load their bags, in anticipation of another big leg up.”
Douglas Horn, chief architect of the scalability-focused blockchain network Telos, told Cointelegraph that institutional investors can be likened to supertankers — i.e., it takes them a lot of time and energy to get them moving, but once they do, it's hard to stop them. He said:
“Now that they have made the decision to get into crypto, they are not going to be dissuaded by some temporary volatility. If anything, they are going to be less flappable about accumulating crypto during downturns. By the time these investors bought their first Bitcoin, they had surely spent years assessing and strategizing their entry and objectives. They operate very differently than typical crypto investors and traders.”
Horn stated that as things stand, the groundwork has already been laid by firms like MicroStrategy for others to follow and that a deluge of newer institutional investors are close to wrapping up their own long due diligence processes assessing the long-term viability of investing in the digital asset market.
Lastly, according to a recent survey, a growing list of traditional financial entities are increasingly looking to move into the realm of digital asset trading/investments. Per the report, some 62% of global institutional investors with no current exposure to cryptocurrencies stated that they are looking to get into the crypto market within the next 12 months or so.
The survey considered the views of 50 wealth managers and 50 institutional investors based out of different countries including the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United Arab Emirates. “There is no doubt that the crypto assets market is becoming more mainstream in the institutional and wealth management sectors,” the report stated.