Felecia Davis 
Banking giants Goldman Sachs and Britain’s Barclays have joined a $70 million Series A funding spherical for the institutional crypto buying and selling platform Elwood Technologies, based by billionaire British hedge fund supervisor Alan Howard.
Joining the spherical was crypto-friendly German financial institution Commerzbank, crypto funding supervisor Galaxy Digital, and Dawn Capital as reported by the Financial Times on May 15. The fundraising spherical valued the corporate at round $500 million based on the report.
Despite the current fall in crypto markets, Elwood stated it is betting that conventional monetary establishments equivalent to hedge funds and banks will nonetheless be occupied with investing in cryptocurrencies. Elwood’s funding spherical was already agreed to and in movement earlier than the most recent drop in costs which has seen roughly 15% wiped off the overall crypto market cap since May 9 based on CoinMarketCap.
Elwood Technologies CEO James Stickland stated the fundraising was “another validation of the longevity of crypto” dismissing the falling costs from the previous couple of weeks:
“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.”
Elwood Technologies offers a crypto portfolio administration system with crypto market data and buying and selling infrastructure for institutional buyers that options an interface that connects to crypto exchanges, liquidity suppliers, and custodians.
Commenting on the deal Goldman Sachs’ international head of digital property Mathew McDermott stated the funding confirmed the agency has “continued commitment” to cryptocurrencies, including:
“As institutional demand for cryptocurrency rises, we have been actively broadening our market presence and capabilities to cater for client demand.”
The funding from Goldman Sachs marks the financial institution’s additional growth into crypto property. The funding financial institution was the primary to supply a mortgage backed by Bitcoin (BTC) to crypto alternate Coinbase in early May. It has lengthy seen an curiosity within the area, even referring to digital property and the Metaverse as “megatrends” in March.
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Another case of the Wall Street large cozying to crypto companies noticed a gathering between Goldman CEO David Solomon and FTX boss Sam Bankman-Fried which included a suggestion from Solomon to assist FTX with future funding rounds and regulatory compliance.
As for Elwood Technologies, it’s going to stay majority-owned by Alan Howard who was the principle investor earlier than the Series A spherical. Howard co-founded the hedge fund Brevan Howard which launched its crypto funding division “BH Digital” in September 2021.
