Crypto Trading Platform Elwood Technologies Backed by Goldman, Barclays

Goldman Sachs and Barclays have invested in crypto trading platform Elwood Technologies, which was founded by Alan Howard, a British hedge fund billionaire, The Financial Times reported Sunday (May 15).

The investment was part of Elwood’s first outside fundraising, and also featured numerous other entities. This will see the two companies putting their weight behind the mainstream adoption of the digital currencies.

The round valued the company at around $500 million, sources told the FT. Elwood has been counting on traditional financial institutions like banks and hedge funds to put more money into digital assets, even despite recent volatility.

That volatility has come with the fall of the UST stablecoin, which had ripple effects affecting the entire crypto ecosystem and its stock shares and values in the past week. The report noted that the market value of the top 500 digital assets is now down by over half from the highs of 2021.

However, the Elwood funding was already on the books before that all happened, the FT noted. Elwood CEO James Stickland hasn’t been fazed by the drop, and said the fundraising was just more proof of crypto’s validity.

Elwood was founded to help manage Howard’s personal crypto fortune. The company gives market data and trading infrastructure to big investors in digital assets.

Goldman has dealt in crypto before. PYMNTS wrote of the bank issuing its first cash loan that had been secured by cryptocurrency.

See also: With BTC-Backed Loan, Goldman Sachs Signals TradFi’s Designs on DeFi’s Bread and Butter

The loan was different from decentralized finance (DeFi) lending, in that Goldman gave the borrower fiat currency instead of a dollar-pegged stablecoin that protocols in DeFi use. The transaction was also different from crypto’s purpose, in that crypto was supposed to get rid of middlemen like banks from financial transactions.

The loan was backed by bitcoin. At the time, the company said that the “interesting piece for us was the structure and the 24-7-365 day risk management.”