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London-Based Family Office Smiles On Digital Assets - Report

Editorial Staff 27 August 2021

London-Based Family Office Smiles On Digital Assets - Report

The report plays to the argument that in some ways digital assets, for all the controversies around them, continue to go more "mainstream".

A UK-based family office called Seek Capital intends to boost exposure to digital assets, an example of wealth management organisations moving into the crypto space, a report said. 

The family office, founded by billionaire Simon Nixon, wants to bolster its crypto exposures, Bloomberg quoted Adam Proctor, a managing director at the organisation, as saying. It is planning to hire an analyst to focus on the sector, said Proctor, who joined this year from Citi Private Bank.

The article noted that a recent Goldman Sachs survey found that nearly half the family offices it conducts business with want to add digital currencies to their stable of investments, with the closely held firms seeing crypto as a possible hedge for higher inflation and prolonged low interest rates. Almost half of respondents to that Goldman Sachs report said that they are thinking of moving into digital assets such as bitcoin although most are not currently in this space. Their main reason for caution is that they are sceptical of whether cryptocurrencies are a store of value. (Goldman Sachs polled more than 150 family offices.)

Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego revealed in November that he’s put a chunk of his liquid funds into Bitcoin, the report said. Michael Novogratz and Christian Angermayer’s family office are founders of Cryptology Asset Group, which pledged in June to allocate $100 million over the next two years to crypto-related funds. 

According to the Seek Capital website, Nixon is a founder of the price-comparison site Moneysupermarket.com - a mortgage-listings company. 

The story also speaks to how the world of digital assets is turning increasingly "mainstream," attracting interest from major institutions including JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Julius Baer, Guggenheim Partners, and others. This news service recently interviewed Nickel Digital Asset Management, a firm in the space, about how bitcoin can, for example, add returns without increasing overall portfolio volatility - see here.

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