Leading Japanese Investment bank, Nomura has decided to launch a crypto subsidiary. This new unit by Nomura shall be operated outside of Japan with a team of 100 personnel by the end of next year.

This move is primarily concerned with facilitating institutional clients as they could invest in cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens.

The report from Financial Times stated that Nomura plans to give institutions access to digital assets, the firm also intends to bring many crypto services under a single company by the end of next year.

Current executives shall continue to remain in control, however, going by the supposed roadmap, there are chances of large-scale external hiring.

Nomura Holdings had begun trading bitcoin derivative contracts last week, including options and futures owing to an increased institutional demand.

Nomura Aiming Institutional Clients

Nomura is one of the largest investment banks, it falls within the top 10 largest banks of Japan. Nomura has had $569 billion in assets under management as of Q1 2022.

After Nomura started trading digital asset derivatives last week, they have started competing with other investment banks, such as the likes of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan.

The current Chief Digital Officer, Jez Mohideen, who is responsible for the wholesale business will be heading the new project.

It has also been reported that a total of fifteen staff members currently employed at Nomura shall be changing teams and will be a part of the the bank’s newest crypto subsidiary. The name of this crypto subsidiary hasn’t been disclosed yet.

Nomura’s crypto economic consulting wing Nomura Research Institute had launched a crypto-asset index in the year of 2020.

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Market Uncertainty Not A Deterrent For Crypto Firms

Nomura had witnessed accelerated growth right after the bank launched over-the-counter cryptocurrency derivatives with Bitcoin non-deliverable forwards and non-deliverable options for clients in Asia, out of Singapore.

It is quite refreshing to see that even though the digital asset’s industry has been toiling under a great amount of pressure and volatility, Nomura has not treated that as a deterrent to keep moving ahead in the space.

The bank has also announced the first bitcoin futures and options trades on CME which is based out of Chicago. Trades that have been carried out on the CME Group’s platform which has supposedly handled 6,944 Bitcoin futures contracts last week.

One Nomura executive has mentioned to the Financial Times that

If we don’t do this, then it’s going to be more difficult down the line to be competitive

He also added, Any asset class at the moment that has discounted cash flow is all under huge stress in an inflationary environment. But I think…many managers will be looking and thinking about potentially allocating towards blockchain technology and blockchain opportunities .

Nomura is one of the first investment banks which have explored custody of crypto assets joining together with the Komainu custody joint venture along with a fund manager CoinShares and custody specialist Ledger in the month of June 2020.

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