Institutional Investors Heading Towards a Crypto Tipping Point – Apollo Capital

Henrik Andersson, CIO of crypto-asset fund manager Apollo Capital, believes institutions may soon “reverse” their conservative stance on crypto.

Speaking to Cointelegraph, the Melbourne-based crypto fund manager said that while institutional interest in crypto has picked up slowly, especially in Australia, there are many players waiting for the right moment to pounce.

Andersson admitted that large institutional investors in Australia, particularly pension funds (or superannuation funds) have yet to warm to the digital asset space.

“It’s still early. So yes, talking to a lot of family offices in Australia and smaller boutique institutions. The big industry super funds are not there yet.”

“From their point of view, there’s still a lot of education going on. So it’s still going to take some time, I think,” he added.

Apollo Capital is a fund manager focused on providing family office and institutional investors with access to crypto investment opportunities. One of the latest funds launched is the Apollo Capital Frontier Fund, which focuses on NFT (nonfungible token) infrastructure, decentralized finance (DeFi) and multi-chain infrastructure.

When asked what needs to happen for the institutional sentiment to change, Andersson believes that this will “flatten out” when major players start to make more extensive moves in the space.

“No one wants to be the first to do something like this. Because if you’re the first and things go wrong, it’s a career risk. At some point, it will turn into the opposite, Andersson explained.

“At some point, when prices go up, people don’t want to miss out. And if others are making investments, it will be a career risk not to be invested.”

In Australia, several major banking institutions such as ANZ, NAB and the Commonwealth Bank (CBA) have already made inroads into the digital asset space.

“We have seen several of the big banks here in Australia take an interest in digital assets. So it’s very, very good to see,” he said.

Notably, CBA was the first major bank in the country to announce crypto services through its mobile banking app last year, but later put the plans on hold, noting that it was still awaiting regulatory clarity from the new government.

Others have pushed forward with stablecoins and tokenized asset trading.

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Internationally, major banking conglomerates such as Singapore’s DBS Bank continue to increase their digital asset operations despite the bear market, while major investment banks have also stepped up coverage of the crypto space.

“You have all the major investment banks in the world writing research reports on the crypto space. Everyone from Goldman Sachs to Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, JP Morgan and others. So there’s definitely still a lot of interest in the space from those kinds of institutional players,” he explained.

“So even though it seems like it’s going very slowly now, you know, as the sentiment changes, we’re seeing the first players make investments that can change very, very quickly.”

Earlier this week, Irfan Ahmad, Asia Pacific digital head of the bank’s crypto unit State Street Digital told the Sydney Morning Herald that despite the current crypto winter, institutional investors have maintained their interest in blockchain and digital assets.