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Goldman Sachs and Barclays, two of the largest financial institutions globally, have announced raising $70 million in a Series A funding round for Elwood Technologies, a crypto trading platform.
Goldman Sachs and Barclays invest in Elwood
The $70 million funding round also saw participation from other institutions such as Germany’s Commerzbank, Galaxy Digital and Dawn Capital. The funding round increased the valuation of Elwood to around $500 million.
Elwood Technologies said that the recent dip in the cryptocurrency market would not deter traditional institutions from investing in the sector. The Series A funding round had already started before the latest drop in cryptocurrency prices that saw billions of dollars worth of crypto liquidated from the market.
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“We’re getting investment from financial institutions that aren’t expecting to get massive returns in 15 minutes. They’re investing in the infrastructure, I think it’s a reassurance message,” said the CEO of Elwood Technologies, James Stickland. The executive also said that the funding round was another sign that the growth of the crypto market would last.
Elwood Technologies is a cryptocurrency firm that offers a digital asset portfolio management system containing market information and trading infrastructure needed by institutional investors to access crypto trading platforms and interact with custodians and liquidity providers.
Mathew McDermott, the head of digital assets at Goldman Sachs, said that this investment would uphold the banks’ commitment to cryptocurrency investments. “As institutional demand for cryptocurrency rises, we have been actively broadening our market presence and capabilities to cater for client demand,” McDermott said.
Wall Street firms move into crypto
This is not the first investment that Goldman Sachs has made in the cryptocurrency sector. The investment bank became the first to provide a Bitcoin-backed loan to Coinbase earlier this month. In March, the investment bank said that the metaverse and digital assets were “megatrends.”
The CEO of Goldman Sachs, David Solomon, also recently announced a partnership with the CEO of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried. The partnership involved an offer from Solomon to be part of the exchange’s future funding rounds and to help the exchange be compliant with regulations.
After this funding round, Elwood Technologies will still be a majority-owned company by Alan Howard. Howard is the main investor in the company, and he is also the co-founder of the Brevan Howard hedge fund that launched the BH Digital crypto division in September last year.
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