[Bitcoin Now] Surpasses 60 Million Won... Asset Management Firms Showing Interest

German Giant Asset Manager Managing Approximately KRW 579 Trillion Plans to Handle Bitcoin in Q4

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Gong Byung-sun] The leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin has surpassed 60 million KRW. It is the first time in about four months that it has crossed the 60 million KRW mark again. A German asset management company managing approximately 500 billion USD (about 578.9 trillion KRW) showing interest in Bitcoin appears to have had a positive impact.

According to the domestic cryptocurrency exchange Upbit, as of 6:20 PM on the 7th, Bitcoin recorded 60.09 million KRW, down 1.22% from the previous day. This is the first time Bitcoin has surpassed 60 million KRW since May 16. Bitcoin has shown an upward trend, rising for six consecutive days this month, but it is somewhat hesitating today. It even rose to 61.11 million KRW at 12:28 PM on the same day.

The fact that a major German asset management company has started handling Bitcoin as an investment product acted as good news. According to the cryptocurrency specialized media Cointelegraph on the 6th (local time), Daniel Bass, portfolio manager at Union Investment, a German asset management company, stated, “From the fourth quarter, some funds that institutional investors can participate in will handle Bitcoin,” adding, “We have limited Bitcoin holdings to up to 2% of each fund’s total assets.”

Union Investment began showing interest in Bitcoin because the German financial authorities allowed institutional investors to invest in cryptocurrencies. Since the 2nd of last month, a law has been in effect allowing German institutional investment funds called Specialfonds to allocate up to 20% of their managed assets to cryptocurrencies. Specialfonds are financial products exclusively handled by institutional investors such as German pension funds and insurance companies. At the time, it was widely expected that there would be few investors due to Germany’s strict regulations, but within a month, a major asset management company has entered the cryptocurrency market.

Credit rating agency Moody’s is also planning to handle cryptocurrencies. According to the cryptocurrency specialized media Coindesk on the 6th, Moody’s announced through a job posting that it is recruiting blockchain experts to cover various fields such as decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFT), stablecoins, and central bank digital currencies (CBDC). The recruited personnel will be responsible for understanding the impact of cryptocurrencies on the existing financial system and the scale of the DeFi market.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.