Multi-Trillion-Dollar Investment Firm Pimco Is Ready To Step Into Crypto, Says CIO

A global management firm handling over $2.2 trillion in assets is ready to embrace crypto.

In a new interview with CNBC, Pimco chief information officer Daniel Ivascyn says that even though cryptocurrencies have a good chance of “disrupting” the industry, the company still plans to invest in digital assets.

“Now we’re looking at potentially trading certain cryptocurrencies as part of our trend-following strategies or quant-oriented strategies, then doing more work on the fundamental side.

So this will be a gradual process where we spend a lot of time on the internal diligence side speaking to investors. And we’ll take baby steps in an area that’s rapidly growing.”

Ivascyn says that Pimco is strategizing how to deal with possible disruptions that decentralized finance (DeFi) might bring.

“You have to understand decentralized finance, because it will be disruptive, and it very well may disrupt our industry, and our business in particular.

[We are] thinking about scenarios where this could take us to ensure that we are competitively prepared to deal with what’s a rapidly changing environment that offers a pretty significant value proposition, particularly for younger generations, or the new generation of the investment community.”

Though the company has yet to invest in cryptocurrencies directly, some of the firm’s hedge funds are currently dealing with crypto-linked securities.

“We’re trading from a relative-value perspective. So we’re not taking directional exposure, but we’re looking to take advantage of mispricings between the cash product, popular trust that trades on the exchange, and then the futures.”

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