Apollo Global holds crypto for institutional clients through the Anchorage Partnership

Apollo Global Management – ​​one of the world’s largest asset managers, with more than $500 billion under management – ​​is breaking into crypto custody through a partnership with digital asset platform Anchorage Digital.

Anchorage, which is the first federally chartered digital asset bank in the US, will hold a “significant portion” of Apollo’s crypto portfolio. In total, Apollo has over 500 billion dollars in assets under management.

“We were drawn to work with Anchorage because of their commitment to operating under strict regulatory oversight, their strong emphasis on security and segregation of client funds, and their ease of use for asset managers to hold digital tokens,” Apollo COO Adam Eling said in a statement on Monday.

Eling added that the company would explore new ways to use blockchain technology across the business.

The move marks another major entry into crypto from a national leader in asset management, after BlackRocks cooperation with Coinbase for Bitcoin trading and custody in August. Fidelity, one of the first major financial companies to break into Bitcoin back in 2018, introduced Ethereum trading to institutional clients earlier this month.

Apollo brought in former JPMorgan crypto head Christine Moy in April to be head of digital assets. Moy told Decrypt at the SALT conference last month that Apollo “appears to be a real practitioner” of blockchain technology and is also interested in “putting real assets on the chain.”

Of course, the collaboration also takes place during a major downturn for both crypto prices and trading activitypossibly indicating that long-term interest in the asset class is still bubbling beneath the surface.

“Institutions are taking a long-term approach to crypto,” said Anchorage President Diogo Mónica Decrypt in an email.

While he declined to comment on what digital assets it would hold on Apollo’s behalf, he said he is confident Apollo and other institutional partners are “here to stay.”

“Apollo is a leader in the alternatives industry, so their use of Anchorage’s custody platform is incredibly validating,” Mónica added.

Anchorage and Apollo’s relationship began more than a year ago when the latter firm began exploring the best ways to protect clients’ crypto holdings.

The asset manager later contributed to Anchorage’s growth by joining it $350 million in Series D financing round December last year. At that time, Mónica implied that major banks and companies had been preparing products for years that were likely to hit the market in “mid to late 2022.”