Apollo holds crypto for clients as it expands in digital assets

In a significant effort to introduce bitcoin to institutional investors, one of the biggest asset managers in the world, Apollo Global Management Inc., has started storing cryptocurrency on behalf of its customers via a collaboration with the digital asset exchange Anchorage Digital.

The decision was made amid a difficult year for the cryptocurrency industry, with bitcoin, the biggest digital asset in the world, down more than 50% since the beginning of 2022 as investors seemed uneasy about the world's historically high inflation rates.

Diogo Mónica, president of Anchorage Digital, a cryptocurrency company that possesses a national trust bank license from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, said: "It's the affirmation of this relentless drumbeat that [crypto] is here to stay." "The fact that there is short-term volatility doesn't really matter for the huge institutions since this is a process and technology with a very long time horizon."

Apollo said its partnership with Anchorage goes back to the middle of last year, when the company first started looking into how to best protect its customers' crypto assets. Apollo refused to specify what kinds of crypto assets it now owns. Apollo subsequently took part in the Series D investment round for Anchorage, which was completed in December 2021.

Adam Eling, chief operating officer of Apollo's digital assets division, stated, "We look forward to cooperating with Anchorage for the protection of client assets as we explore innovative ways to deploy blockchain technology throughout Apollo's company."

Mónica said that negotiations regarding how Anchorage can eventually strengthen its partnership with Apollo are already underway.

Christine Moy, a former executive at JPMorgan Chase who was recruited by Apollo in April, will oversee the company's digital asset strategy and play a crucial role in its investment choices in cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology, and Web3, a decentralized version of the internet.