Bitcoin is the first digital asset being offered through the partnership between BlackRock and Coinbase. BlackRock’s Aladdin investment management platform will offer connectivity to Coinbase Prime to offer crypto trading, custody, prime brokerage, and reporting capabilities to shared clients.
Clients of Aladdin and Coinbase will be able to manage their Bitcoin exposures alongside their public and private investments for a whole-portfolio view of risk. This is a surprise move, as BlackRock’s chairman had a poor opinion about Bitcoin five years ago.
However, since then, the asset management firm has made small advances into Web3.0, introducing Bitcoin futures trading to its platform and to a couple of its funds in 2021. In March 2022 BlackRock was studying digital currencies, stablecoins, and the underlying technologies to see how they could help the firm serve its clients.
Coinbase Prime has 13,000 institutional clients using its suite of tools, according to the company. It remains unclear when the companies plan to add to the platform other cryptocurrency offerings outside of Bitcoin.
Coinbase partners Meta
In parallel news, Meta has also announced that the company has added an integration with Coinbase’s wallet, among other third-party crypto wallets, to the Instagram platform. Instagram is beginning to test digital collectibles with several US creators and collectors who will be able to share NFTs on Instagram that they have created or bought.
Back in May the company began testing digital collectibles with a handful of US creators and collectors were able to share NFTs on Instagram that they have created or bought. Now the solution has been expanded to 100 countries in Africa, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and the Americas.
To add to this, Instagram is now supporting wallet connections with the Coinbase Wallet and Dapper, as well as the ability to post digital collectibles minted on the Flow blockchain. In order to post a digital collectible, users need to connect their digital wallet to Instagram. Supported blockchains at this time include Ethereum, Polygon and Flow. There are no fees associated with posting or sharing a digital collectible on Instagram, as the company says.
The company finds it important that their early efforts in this space help diverse voices and that underrepresented groups have access to emerging digital assets like NFTs. By building support for NFTs, they aim to improve accessibility, lower barriers to entry, and help make the NFT space more inclusive to all communities.
To keep their accounts secure and enjoyable, users can report digital collectibles which go against community guidelines. As blockchain technology and NFTs currently raise a question on sustainability, Meta wants to help reduce the emissions impact of this technology and for that purpose the company is purchasing renewable energy.
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