JP Morgan, one of the biggest investment banks in the world, has given its wealth management clients access to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency funds, according to reports.
Clients are now able to buy and sell five cryptocurrency products through JP Morgan advisors, Business Insiderreported today, citing a memo it had seen. Advisors have access to four Grayscale Investments products and one Osprey Funds product.
The orders—effective from July 19—give clients exposure to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum Classic via Grayscale's Bitcoin Trust, Bitcoin Cash Trust, Ethereum Trust, and Ethereum Classic vehicles. Clients also can invest in Osprey Fund’s Bitcoin Trust, Business Insider reported.
Grayscale, crypto’s most dominant asset manager, has released a new guide for investors looking to get started with Ethereum.
Valuing Ethereum is a paper from Grayscale’s research arm, which puts out reports on different aspects of the broader crypto ecosystem; last summer, Grayscale released a similar guide called Valuing Bitcoin.
The timing makes sense—the crypto market is still buzzing from Ethereum’s breaking through its previous all-time high earlier this week. It’s up 26% over the past se...
Such funds do not mean JP Morgan’s clients will personally own cryptocurrency—they’ll just have exposure to it. Grayscale and Osprey are firms that allow investors to have a stake in the crypto world by letting them buy shares that track the price of assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Grayscale and Osprey do all the complicated stuff—like buying and storing the cryptocurrencies.
Grayscale is the biggest asset manager in the crypto world—currently managing $27.5 billion. It is owned by Digital Currency Group, a New York City-based venture capital firm. But as of late, the firm’s shares have been trading at a discount to the price of Bitcoin. Prior, these shares traded at a premium, meaning it was more expensive to buy them than to invest in Bitcoin directly.
07/21/21 UPDATE: Net Assets Under Management, Holdings per Share, and Market Price per Share for our Investment Products.
Business Insider added that JP Morgan's advisors can only execute “unsolicited” crypto trades: they are not allowed to recommend the products but can and sell the products if a client requests them to do so.
In March, Morgan Stanley, another huge investment bank, allowed wealthier investors to gain exposure to Bitcoin via the Galaxy Bitcoin Fund LP, Galaxy Institutional Bitcoin Fund LP, and the FS NYDIG Select Fund. Morgan Stanley, however, only made this available to clients with at least $2 million in assets in the bank.
New York City-based JP Morgan is becoming more open to the crypto world. The company’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, previously called Bitcoin a “fraud” but now the firm regularly speaks about digital assets and provides banking services to top crypto exchanges Coinbase and Gemini.
Daily Debrief Newsletter
Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
The official Donald Trump meme coin project will not launch its planned Trump-branded crypto wallet, according to President Trump's son, Eric Trump. The move comes following a dust-up with the president's sons, who plan to launch a wallet through their own World Liberty Financial project, which is also backed by President Trump.
"I am proud to announce the TRUMP meme coin has aligned with [World Liberty Financial]," Eric Trump wrote on X on Friday. "Although their meme wallet isn’t moving forwar...
X has unveiled a real-time tool that dissects market-moving news in partnership with Polymarket, a crypto-native prediction markets platform, the companies said Friday in a joint statement.
Launched on Friday, the tool will offer live insights into events that influence markets, combining data from X and predictions from Polymarket. In addition, the product will leverage xAI’s chatbot Grok and relevant X posts to provide real-time explanations of market moves.
Combining those various technolo...
Binance Head of Financial Crime Compliance Tigran Gambaryan is departing the crypto exchange where he spent four years investigating illicit finance and cybercrimes, he said Friday in a Linkedin post, just a few months after escaping a harrowing eight-month-long detention in Nigeria.
In the social media post, Gambaryan, a former IRS agent, shared that he is on the lookout for “new challenges.” He intends to pursue job opportunities in the public sector or at a mission-driven institution in the...