The head of digital assets at Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon), Michael Demissie, is convinced that the institutional interest in digital assets won't be affected by the fall of the bitcoin market in 2022.
Demissie asserted Feb. 8 at a conference hosted by Afore Consulting that institutional investors' keen interest in cryptocurrencies has made the digital asset market "here to stay."
"What we see is clients are absolutely interested in digital assets, broadly,” he said, according to a Feb. 8 report from Reuters.
Demissie supported his claims by citing a BNY Mellon poll from October, which revealed that 91% of custodial bank clients are interested in investing in tokenized products based on blockchain.
88% of those polled also stated that they still intended to make long-term investments in the digital asset industry despite the sharp decline in the bitcoin market in 2022.
Adoption rates of cryptocurrencies and digital assets are still growing, despite the recent crypto winter, Fireblock’s Michael Shaulov, tells Aerial View. Visit https://t.co/vELI6pZUDy #aerialviewbites #cutthroughthecorporate #sibos #aerialview #digitalassets @bnymellonAV pic.twitter.com/Po4bgEpJn9
— BNY Mellon (@BNYMellon) October 28, 2022
Demissie did, however, mention that more effort was required in Washington D.C., in order for business participants to advance with more regulatory certainty.
"We absolutely need clear regulation and rules for the road. We need responsible actors who can offer reliable services that live up to investors trust. It's important that we navigate this space in a responsible way."
The hiring of Caroline Butler as the company's CEO of Digital Assets was made public by BNY Mellon on February 2 in order to spur the subsequent wave of customer adoption. Previously, she served as the CEO of custodial services.
As the Digital Assets CEO, Caroline Butler will lead global efforts to accelerate @BNYMellon's commercial digital assets initiatives. https://t.co/tYbuJzrAZt pic.twitter.com/OacBbHO1xZ
— BNY Mellon (@BNYMellon) February 2, 2023
The appointment occurs at the same time as BNY Mellon introduced its own digital custody platform in October, enabling a small group of institutional clients to invest in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).
In order to track and evaluate bitcoin goods, BNY Mellon previously declared a cooperation with on-chain measurement platform Chainalysis in February2022.
Not just BNY Mellon, but other significant banks have recently begun to get into the digital asset sector. Following the devastating failure of FTX in November, numerous bitcoin businesses were said to have received attention from Goldman Sachs.
Although Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan, is not a fan of Bitcoin, his company has recently experimented with blockchain-based services. The company completed its first cross-border transaction utilizing decentralized finance on a public blockchain successfully in November.
