New reports show the Bitgo exchange is looking to open a new electronic brokerage service for cryptocurrencies.
“The company has been building out the brokerage for a few years,” writes Nikhilish De at CoinDesk, citing executive input. “The current phase of BitGo Prime’s rollout enables trading, and the new entity is looking to aggregate pricing from ‘multiple reputable counterparties, market makers and exchanges.’”
De notes certain institutional trends as factors in the rush to open up brokerage services for blockchain digital assets
Chief among them is the uncertainty that comes from printing trillions of dollars in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
“I guarantee you that every hedge fund manager if they weren’t already allocated some way in crypto they’re looking at it now,” says BitGo CEO Mike Belshe as quoted in De’s story, talking about how the COVID response has led larger investors to look for safe havens including crypto assets, and sparked more interest in the kinds of services that Bitgo is aiming for, for example, as hedges.
De and the execs he interviews suggest that hedge fund managers and other big buyers are looking for cryptocurrency brokerage services in today’s market context.
Meanwhile, regulators are evolving how they treat cryptocurrency taxation, and Bitcoin ATMs are appearing on street corners.
“Bitcoin, a borderless and permissionless substitute to government-sanctioned fiat money, is going to be in high demand in the post-coronavirus world,” writes Billy Brambough at Forbes.
That’s leading to interesting price action.
“After a tumultuous two months during the COVID-19 pandemic, the price of bitcoin is starting to return to form as the cryptocurrency sees its highest prices since the second week of March,” writes Duncan Riley at Silicon Angle. “During the pandemic and related financial turmoil, bitcoin has been on a rollercoaster ride, dropping briefly below $4,000 March 12, down from more than $10,000 in the middle of February before slowly rising again.”
Watch BTC.
