Bob Diamond, former Barclays CEO, commented on BlackRock’s recent crypto activities during a CNBC interview on June 21st.
Diamond, now CEO of Atlas Merchant Capital, said:
“I would love to see some of the more mainstream companies get involved here like BlackRock… I’m not surprised they’re more involved now in cryptocurrency more broadly.”
Black stone introduced recently Bitcoin spot exchange fund (ETF). If successful, it will be the first company in the United States to make such an investment.
However, BlackRock’s crypto activities are not limited to this deposit. Diamond noted that one of his companies and BlackRock had previously invested in USDC firm circle.
BlackRock participated in April 2022 The funding round through which the department raised $400 million. Diamond’s current company, Atlas, is not named as an investor in this press release, and as such, the capacity in which Diamond and his companies have invested is unclear.
Diamond Commentaries on the Cryptocurrency Industry
Diamond also commented on the cryptocurrency market more broadly. He said:
“Crypto is a broad term, but if you narrow it down to digitizing a lot of what we do it’s a natural path.”
He argued that the cryptocurrency industry should stop avoiding regulation, adding that cooperation with regulators would attract the banking industry. He said that “strong banks want strong regulation”. He said clarity is needed for cryptocurrency to have a positive impact.
Although Diamond did not name any companies suffering from the regulation, there are two leading cryptocurrency exchanges, Coinbase and Binance It faced charges from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in June. Both companies said they tried to work with regulators but were not given any way to register.
Diamond said he did not buy bitcoin (BTC). However, he said his partner at Atlas Merchant Capital, David Schamis, has invested.
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