Leon Neal
Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) shares are spiking 17.8% to the highest since the beginning of May in Thursday morning trading, as it teams up with asset management behemoth BlackRock (NYSE:BLK) to enable its institutional clients to trade bitcoin (BTC-USD).
Shares of America’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume jumped as much as 45% at the opening bell, but have since given up some gains. Nevertheless, COIN is up 65% in the past five sessions and +105% M/M, as investors widen their risk appetite in what some are calling a broad bear market rally in risk assets.
Through Coinbase Prime, institutional clients of Aladdin, BlackRock’s (BLK) end-to-end investment management platform, will be given direct access to buy and sell crypto, starting with bitcoin (BTC-USD), according to a blog post.
Aladdin’s Institutional client base will also be provided with crypto custody, prime brokerage, and reporting capabilities.
“Our institutional clients are increasingly interested in gaining exposure to digital asset markets and are focused on how to efficiently manage the operational lifecycle of these assets,” said Joseph Chalom, global head of Strategic Ecosystem Partnerships at BlackRock.
The partnership with Coinbase (COIN) “will allow clients to manage their bitcoin exposures directly in their existing portfolio management and trading workflows for a whole portfolio view of risk across asset classes,” Chalom added.
The move highlights Wall Street’s increasing interest in the crypto space despite the cyclical market downturn fueled by a string of recent meltdowns ranging from algorithmic stablecoin TerraUST (UST-USD) to crypto lender Celsius. Over the past week, the Solana network and Nomad have come under attack in a blow to the crypto ecosystem.
Also bear in mind that Coinbase (COIN) stock is still off over 75% from its November peak of $357.39 as of Wednesday’s close. Similarly, bitcoin (BTC-USD) is changing hands at $22.88K over the past 24 hours, down roughly 65% from its all-time high in November.
Earlier this week (August 3), Coinbase jumped the most among crypto stocks as bitcoin reclaimed $23K.