Julius Baer Group, a 132-year-old Swiss bank with over $116 billion in assets under management, is set to offer crypto services to its wealthiest clients.
According to a report from Bloomberg, Baer believes the crypto industry could be having its “dot com” moment where overvalued projects dissipate to make way for the powerhouses that ultimately go on to dominate the industry.
“It could well be at this very instant that we are witnessing a bubble-burst moment of the crypto-industry and we all know what happened after the dot-com bubble burst 30 years ago,” CEO Philipp Rickenbacher said. “It paved the way for the emergence of a new sector that indeed transformed our lives.“
“They will transform the financial sector over the next ten years and it is important for us to gain a strong foothold in this area. That’s why it’s exactly the right moment to invest in the long-term potential of digital asset technology.“
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Baer also said that when it invested in crypto bank SEBA, it became convinced that digital assets would become a “legitimate sustainable asset class of an investor’s portfolio.” The bank's connection with SEBA has helped Baer to refer clients to its own platform for custody and risk management services.
According to Bloomberg, the bank has plans to provide research services for crypto, decentralized finance (DeFi) and blockchain, plus advice on investing in the asset class. Baer is currently running a pilot program centred on token booking, trading, and compliance.
“On the other hand, it’s also where traditional, cost-heavy and complex parts of the old banking system are today just rewritten with a few lines of code,” Rickenbacher said in regards to DeFi. “As technology and traditional finance ultimately will converge, there is huge potential to really transform our value chains.“
