Institutional appetite for digital assets 'has not slowed,' according to PolySign and MG Stover CEOs

Episode 54 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro, Jack McDonald, chair & CEO of PolySign, and Matt Stover, CEO of MG Stover.

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Back in April, digital asset infrastructure provider PolySign acquired top fund administration firm MG Stover as reported by CoinDesk. At the time of acquisition, MG Stover had more than $40 billion in digital assets under administration. 

This move coincided with PolySign completing its Series C fundraise, which included new powerhouse investors such as Soros Fund Management, Brevan Howard and GSR, along with former investors including Cowen Digital, who led PolySign’s $54 million Series B last year.

In this episode of The Scoop, Jack McDonald, chair and CEO of Polysign, and Matt Stover, CEO of MG Stover, sit down with host Frank Chaparro to record their first-ever podcast together, and to discuss the unwavering demand for digital asset-related products they are seeing from their clients.

As Stover explained, while crypto prices may be down, there is still plenty of private funding flowing toward building out digital asset infrastructure:

“We get to see both the liquid and illiquid on the investment side and there's so much capital still flowing into the private companies building infrastructure around this new asset class.”

Although the recent market downturn has many market participants on edge, McDonald says the long-term view institutions from traditional finance have when it comes to digital assets make short-term market movements irrelevant.

As McDonald said during the interview:

“The long-term view that these traditional asset managers make in investing in this sort of way is really unaffected by the recent market downturns. They're taking a long-term view and they've done the work to make these decisions.”

During this episode, Chaparro, McDonald, and Stover also discuss:

• Systematic risk in crypto
• The future of digital assets beyond cryptocurrency
• How emotions drive crypto booms and busts

This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Fireblocks, Coinbase Prime & Cross River
Fireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform delivering a secure infrastructure for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks enables exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds to securely scale digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure. Fireblocks serves over 725 financial institutions, has secured the transfer of over $1.5 trillion in digital assets, and has a unique insurance policy that covers assets in storage & transit. For more information, please visit www.fireblocks.com.

About Coinbase Prime
Coinbase Prime is an integrated solution that provides institutional investors with an advanced trading platform, secure custody, and prime services to manage all their crypto assets in one place. Coinbase Prime fully integrates crypto trading and custody on a single platform, and gives clients the best all-in pricing in their network using their proprietary Smart Order Router and algorithmic execution. For more information, visit www.coinbase.com/prime.

About Cross River
Cross River is powering today’s most innovative crypto companies, with banking and payments solutions you can rely on, including fiat on/off ramp solutions. Whether you are a crypto exchange, NFT marketplace, or wallet, Cross River’s API-based, all-in-one platform enables banking as a service, ACH & wire transfers, push-to-card disbursements, real-time payments, and virtual accounts and subledgers. Request your fiat on/off ramp solution now at crossriver.com/crypto.