Genesis Global Lends $553 Million In Crypto Assets, Institutional Space Booming
Even in the thick of 2018’s crypto bear market, a related subsector has seen an unprecedented boom, with institutions throwing millions of dollars at a well-recognized over-the-counter (OTC) player in the cryptocurrency market. Per a brief report from New York-based Genesis Global Capital, titled “2018 Q3 Digital Asset Lending Snapshot,” at the start of March 2018, the firm launched the crypto industry’s first-ever institutional lending business to go hand-in-hand with Genesis’ already-established OTC desk.Although the venture was nothing more than an experimental stab at a potentially revolutionary service, in the same report, the American company revealed that its clients quickly gained interest in crypto asset loans. Elaborating, Genesis Capital wrote:“Over the past year, through client feedback and the rise of derivative marketplaces, we saw a meaningful increase in the number of market participants wanting to borrow and/or lend digital currencies. We built this new business segment to meet those demands and have experienced an incredibly strong reception since our launch.”This “incredibly strong reception” has seemingly taken the form of “60+ institutional counterparties,” who have requested for cryptocurrency loans across “nearly a dozen digital assets” in the past six months. According to statistics from the firm itself, these loans amounted to a monetary value of $553 million, a jaw-dropping sum to say the least.
