Investment Bank Cowen Launches Digital Asset Unit

investopedia.com:

U.S. full-service investment bank Cowen Inc. (COWN) announced on Wednesday, March 23, that it has launched a dedicated digital asset division, becoming the latest Wall Street bank to enter the emerging cryptocurrency space.

The new unit named Cowen Digital will allow the bank's institutional investors to trade established cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. It will also provide a custody solution to store digital assets through Standard Custody & Trust Co.

«Through Cowen Digital, our clients now have access to the crypto and digital asset markets with our institutional quality and fully integrated end-to-end execution and custody capabilities,» Jeffrey Solomon, Cowen's chair and CEO, said in a statement. «Cowen is committed to outperforming for its clients by staying at the forefront of innovation,» he added.

The bank has spent 15 months developing the necessary systems and infrastructure to launch the division, according to the statement.

Cowen Digital—to be led by the bank's former equity derivatives head Dan Forman—intends to increase its initial headcount from around 40 to more than 100 staff members in the near term and has plans to branch out into crypto derivatives, lending, decentralized finance (DeFi), and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

The announcement comes a month after U.S. banking giant JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) launched into the metaverse by opening a lounge in the blockchain-based virtual world of Decentraland. In the lounge, customers can buy virtual plots of land with NFTs and purchase other services using cryptocurrency.More recently, New York-based investment bank The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (GS) continued its push into cryptocurrencies, executing an over-the-counter (OTC)