Through the investment management platform Aladdin, BlackRock and Coinbase enable their mutual customers to gain access to crypto trading, custody, prime brokerage and reporting capabilities as reported by a blog post on Thursday the 4^th of August¹.

Joseph Chalom, BlackRock’s global head of strategic ecosystem partnerships stated in the blog post of Coinbase the following: “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,”.  In addition, Chalom mentioned that the connectivity with Aladdin allows BlackRock’s clients to directly manage crypto exposure in investment portfolios and add trading workflows to enable investors to create a whole portfolio view of risk across asset classes. 

Coinbase Prime, a platform specifically designed for institutional investors, will be providing access to beforementioned functions. In collaboration with BlackRock, the integrated trading solution will be expanded upon/on by adding more services in phases.

The partnership is announced four months after Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, confirmed in a letter to shareholders² that institutional clients showed continued interest in exposure to digital assets. This emphasizes/highlights the demand of institutional investors to adopt crypto-assets in investment portfolios. 

The partnership can be the positive development Coinbase required in order to move towards recovery. The company reportedly struggled this year as the profit trajectory was looking unsettling. There were multiple conflicts, such as insider trading and a failed NFT-market place launch,  impacting the profit trajectory³. 

Adding a considerable amount of institutional investors to the company’s client base has the potential to improve the trajectory for both Coinbase and possibly the crypto-asset ecosystem as well.

Coindesk reported that Emilie Choi, president of Coinbase, emailed a statement regarding the collaboration between BlackRock and Coinbase. “BlackRock’s deep expertise in investment management technology, combined with Coinbase’s integrated and secure trading, custody and prime brokerage product suite will facilitate greater institutional access and transparency to digital asset investing,⁴”