Venture Capital VP Expects Wall Street to Embrace Cryptocurrencies in 2019
Vice president of investments at venture capital firm Digital Currency Group (DCG) expects Wall Street to dive into crypto in 2019. Travis Scher told Business Insider that the properly regulated and secure infrastructure that big-time investors require will become a reality this year.
Intercontinental Exchange, owner of the New York Stock Exchange, is one of many traditional finance players working to drive adoption of cryptocurrencies. As they build onramps to make crypto easier to access for Wall Street investors, trillions could enter the market.
DRW Holdings, Virtu Financial, TD Ameritrade, Cboe Global Markets and DCG have all backed a crypto spot trading exchange for major coins such as Ethereum and Bitcoin.
The upcoming crypto platform from ErisX Exchange, which is expected to launch in the first half of 2019, will roll out a number of investment options throughout the year. According to J.B. Mackenzie, TD Ameritrade’s managing director of futures and foreign exchange, clients will potentially be able to trade physically-backed crypto futures, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin.
Scher also thinks the video game industry will help drive cryptocurrency adoption in 2019. Non-fungible tokens are the baseball cards of crypto – unlike Bitcoin, they’re not interchangeable. Instead, they allow developers to create blockchain-based collectibles that are popular in the gaming community.
Scher says,
“Venture capitalists should be paying attention to the ones that are building platforms and developer teams, companies that are not creating just one game but are building several developed business models that can succeed.”
Digital Currency Group, a New York-based venture capital company with investments in early-stage crypto startups such as Coinbase, was founded by Barry Silbert, one of the most prolific angel investors in crypto-related companies.
DCG owns and operates Grayscale Investments, which manages the first publicly traded Bitcoin investment vehicle, the Bitcoin Investment Trust. DCG also owns and operates Genesis Trading, a leading Bitcoin brokerage firm.
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