JP Morgan, the American Banking behemoth today announced that they would start offering a private Bitcoin fund for their clients starting this summer. As per reports NYDIG, the institutional asset manager would be the custodian of the fund. The said Bitcoin fund would be for private wealth clients.
The banking giant had earlier issued an indirect exposure to bitcoin in March by offering a private fund that tracks the performance of stocks with exposure to Bitcoin such as MicroStrategy and Riot Blockchain. However, the current bitcoin fund would directly trace the price of Bitcoin instead of indirect exposure.
JP Morgan’s decision to start offering Bitcoin funds to its private client marks a complete circle for the banking giant, given it was among the first institution to dismiss BTC as a bubble calling it a speculative asset. Even at the start of this year, the bank had dismissed the idea of offering a Bitcoin tracking fund suggesting the demand wasn’t large enough for them to introduce any such product.
JP Morgan Joins the Long List of Bitcoin Deniers Offering Bitcoin Product in 2021
The 2021 bull season has seen many institutional giants, Wall Street banking giants, and hedge fund managers retreat their early criticism for the top cryptocurrency and start offering Bitcoin-based products amid growing demand. Apart from JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs which once deemed Bitcoin too volatile to be an asset class has added Bitcoin at the top of the best-performing assets.
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager which called Bitcoin a money-laundering scheme has also gained exposure in top cryptocurrency via their investment in MicroStrategy and Galaxy Digital. Apart from these banking giants, many payment processing giants such as PayPal, Venmo, and Square have also started offering Bitcoin trading and spending services through their platform.
