Barclays Puts Crypto Trading Platform Project On Hold

By Rishma Banerjee

Barclays is a multinational bank and financial service company, based in the UK and headquartered in London. As per sources “familiar with the situation,” they have put on hold their plans for their cryptocurrency trading platform.

This digital assets program was supposed to be headed by Chris Tyrer, Barclays former global head of commodities, along with Marvin Barth, head of forex and emerging markets macro strategy, technology officer Lee Braine and Matthieu Jobbe Duval, who is digital assets consultant. They have been researching on the viability of cryptocurrencies as something the clients of Barclays might be interested in, and the infrastructure that would be best suited to support the efforts. Though it seems that the research came up with certain obstacles that Barclays was not ready or equipped to undertake, and there was a lack of interest and willingness on the part of the customers to explore the crypto market as a viable sector to invest in.

It was rumoured that Barclays has collaborated with Goldman Sachs in investigating a crypto trading desk, in the month of April 2018. This rumour gathered steam when in August, Barclays created its Digital Asset Team. Goldman Sachs too is rumoured to be working on their own crypto trading desk but had neither accepted or denied these claims.

No specific reason was put forward by Barclays, only that it had been currently put on hold.

Chief executive officer Jes Staley, when asked about why this project had been put on hold, said that they were worried that cryptocurrencies could be “used for activities that the bank wants to have no part of.”

However, in the recent weeks, the market for cryptocurrencies have been kind of bearish, with declining prices which is promoting a sense of disinterest from the investors.