Cowen launches cryptocurrency division for institutional trading, custody solutions

Investment bank Cowen (NASDAQ:COWN) on Wednesday has launched Cowen Digital, its Connecticut-based cryptocurrency division offering trading and custody solutions for institutional investors. Custody solutions are provided through Cowen’s partnership with PolySign’s Standard Custody & Trust. With the new digital asset unit, institutional investors can utilize Cowen's (COWN) proprietary algorithms through high-touch or low-touch trading, for example. Future functionality for Cowen Digital will include derivatives and futures, financing solutions as well as institutional DeFi and NFT access, the company said. “Through Cowen Digital, our clients now have access to the crypto and digital asset markets with our institutional quality and fully integrated end-to-end execution and custody capabilities,” said Jeffrey M. Solomon, Cowen chair and CEO. Looking at intraday crypto price action, bitcoin (BTC-USD -1.4%) is slipping to $42.2K and ethereum (ETH-USD -0.9%) is struggling to cling onto $3K. See why Cowen may benefit from robust M&A activity this year.