Standard Chartered VC arm plans $250M crypto fund

Major traditional companies are moving into crypto, this is not news but it is something we're going to be talking about for a couple of years until the concept of TradFi crypto investments no longer feels out of character.

The convergence of TradFi and DeFi is happening, and what this means on a grand scheme of things differs, depending on who you ask.

If you ask me, I'd say that it simply means that new players are taking an interest in market influence and that implies a direct influence on development trends.

This means governance influence, which affects what the ecosystem will look like in the next couple decades.

Traditional finance players are not just happy to give away liquidity, they are happy to trade leverage for a much bigger leverage.

Standard Chartered’s venture arm is preparing to launch a $250 million cryptocurrency investment fund in 2026, signaling growing institutional appetite for digital assets.

Standard Chartered’s SC Ventures plans to raise the capital to open the investment fund focused on digital assets in the financial services sector, Bloomberg reported Monday, citing operating partner Gautam Jain.

SC Ventures’ plan follows a wave of corporate treasury firms building long-term accumulation strategies, adding to expectations that more institutional inflows may enter the crypto market over the next several years. – Cointelegraph report

You see, when people talk about crypto, they talk about Bitcoin, Ethereum, then Solana, and more often than not, most shit in the top 10-20 gets highlighted.

These conversations generally will result in debates over things like consensus mechanisms and development focus. This means that we'll hear how proof of work so much differs from proof of stake, probably how it's better, sort of.

The problem is, it doesn't matter beyond the chain what consensus mechanism is employed, at the end of the day, liquid stake is the biggest leverage, especially for an industry that is evidently married to price actions.

TradFi has the money, the crypto ecosystem has the tech that threatens it. Said tech, still relies on liquid capital, a leverage TradFi has over DeFi right now.

Public companies hold 4.83% supply of Bitcoin (BTC), worth over $116.88 billion.

They also hold 2.85% of Ethereum (ETH), worth over $15.45 billion.

They also hold 1.21% of Solana (SOL), worth over $1.5 billion.

They also hold $478 million worth of BNB, $151 million of DOGE, $6.77 million of HYPE, $366 million of SUI and $234 million of TRX.

That we know of. Adding this all up brings the total market-value holdings of crypto assets by public companies to over $135 billion.

This means that traditional finance now holds market influence at 3.37% of crypto’s $4 trillion market.

Certainly, it feels small, but this is only because we're looking at it generally. If we focus on the leading assets being acquired and how their existence influences the broader industry, we can understand how this feels more like a 15-30% market influence and likely to rise to over 80% within the next couple years.

If you can't beat, join them. That's what they say. But traditional finance is coming to dominate. It's not a partnership, this is a battle to position for control over the future layer of commerce and pretty much everything else and we'll spend the next decade actively discussing it.

Posted Using INLEO