Goldman Sachs, Barclays Fund Alan Howard's Crypto Trading Platform

Goldman Sachs has, yet again, reinstated its support for the crypto industry by leading an investment round in British billionaire Alan Howard's Elwood Technologies. Based in London, UK, Elwood facilitates crypto trading along with other financial services. Along with Goldman, UK's Barclays bank has also funded Elwood Technologies, betting on the future of cryptocurrencies. While the investment details from this funding round remain unclear, this funding did elevate Elwood's market valuation to reportedly $500 million (roughly Rs. 3,894 crore).

In totality, this fresh funding round fetched $70 million (roughly Rs. 545 crore) for Elwood Technologies. Down Capital as well as venture units of Commerzbank AG and billionaire Michael Novogratz Galaxy Digital Holdings Ltd, a crypto merchant bank, emerged as other investors who participated in the funding round, Bloomberg reported.

As per James Stickland, the CEO of Elwood Technologies has linked bagging this investment as a testimony to the bright future of crypto.

“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, another validation of the longevity of crypto,” Stickland was quoted as saying.

Elwood, that initially started with the intention of providing asset management and crypto fund portfolios for institutional crypto investors, is looking to tweak its operations with the newly acquired capital.

The platform now sells homegrown technologies to manage crypto investments to other clients. The technologies were developed to help the company manage its own crypto holdings.

Meanwhile, leading the investment round for Elwood, Goldman Sachs has added another crypto-centric step to the many others that the Wall Street-backed American lender has taken in recent days.

In April, the 153-year-old bank historically issued its first ever Bitcoin-backed loan in order to contribute to the institutional adoption of cryptocurrencies. The loan was granted to Coinbase crypto exchange.

The lender said that it is looking to tokenise real-life assets as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Despite the recent crypto market slowdowns, investments on related companies have not ceased.

Recently, Singapore-based crypto exchange KuCoin raised fresh capital of $150 million (roughly Rs. 1,158 crore) in a pre-Series B funding round.

Last week, Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of crypto exchange FTX, purchased 7.6 percent stake in Robinhood crypto-stock exchange.

Crypto venture capitalist Dragonfly Capital has also vouched to launch its biggest fund yet, with a valuation of $650 million (roughly Rs. 4,975 crore) to help fund promising crypto startups.

Market analysts have also time and again highlighted, that more institutional investments will bring more credibility to the crypto sector.