No Crypto Trading Desk for Barclays

By Dmitriy

Barclays is a leading British multinational banking and financial service company with its headquarter situated in London. It was founded in the year 1690 and now operates in over 40 different countries. Other than investment banking, Barclays also has other four major core businesses- corporate banking, personal banking, Investment Management, Wealth Management.

With cryptocurrencies being the next big thing in the market, Barclays have been looking into business opportunities linked with cryptocurrency for quite some time. Recently during the bank’s annual general meeting, the chief executive of the U.K. banking giant Jes Staley disclosed that Barclays has no immediate plans of launching their own cryptocurrency trading desk anytime soon.

During the bank’s annual general meeting (AGM), Barclays chief executive (CEO) Jes Staley stated that:

“Cryptocurrency has become a real challenge to us. On one hand, it has this very innovative side of it wanting to stay in the leading edge of technology’s improvement in finance and on the other hand, there is a probability of cryptocurrencies being used in certain projects or task which the banks do not want to be a part of.”

Staley repudiated the recent speculation regarding the preliminary discussions. The company has been calculating and observing the clients interest regarding the establishment of their own cryptocurrency trading desk. According to reports, Barclays Spokesperson stated that the company has been constantly monitoring the development in the cryptocurrency and will continue to communicate with our clients about their needs and their target and intentions regarding this market but has no current plan of launching their own crypto trading desk as of yet. Some insiders also reported that there are rumours about Barclays going into a partnership with Goldman Sachs, a major U.S. based financial institution who are currently looking into cryptocurrencies. Although the Barclay’s have denied the rumours and stated that they have no plans to go into partnership with U.S. based investment firm.

Earlier, Barclays had also analogized the escalated growth of cryptocurrency to a contagious disease which already has been treated against and will thus diminish. It labelled the general public as either infected, vulnerable or immune to the cryptocurrency. It predicted that the Bitcoin was going to crash downwards when the unit price will plunge below $6,000 per unit but since the prediction, the value of Bitcoins has continued to rise from around $6,800 per unit to over $9,000 mark according to today’s market.

The topic of Cryptocurrencies has made a mark in the world of traditional finance by making the world think about it. Certain financial institutions like Goldman Sachs appear to be accepting and adopting the new innovation in the financial world whereas other big players such as JP Morgan maintains an anti-cryptocurrency attitude. Jamie Dimon, Chief executive Officer (CEO) of JP Morgan addresses Cryptocurrency (Bitcoin) as a fraud last year before he regretted the statement and had to take back his comment.

According to a recent report, U.K. based banks have become one of the largest and substantial supporters of turning blockchain into a reality in this old-fashioned world by setting up certain progressive strings of the standards.