Crypto adoption is seeing brands like Gucci take center stage, say co-heads of Brevan Howard Digital

In August, it was reported that asset management firm Brevan Howard raised over $1 billion to invest in the crypto industry.

In this episode of The Scoop, Bevan Howard’s Co-Heads of Ventures Peter Johnson and Colleen Sullivan break down their investment thesis and explain what segments of the crypto market they believe are seeing the most interest from existing brands.

While traditional financial institutions are slowly moving their way into the crypto ecosystem, Sullivan points out that many traditional brands have already fully entered crypto via NFTs, metaverse experiences, and gaming:

“Look at Goldman, JPMorgan, Citi, they're all involved in crypto to a certain extent — not to the degree we would have thought — but the institutions that are here are the Gucci's, the Nike's, the Tiffany's, the Dolce and Gabbana, Balmain, Balenciaga.”

Blockchain gaming is one subset of the crypto market that Brevan Howard has recently been allocating to; just last week the firm co-led a $40 million Series A for Web3 gaming startup Horizon Blockchain Games.

Outside of gaming, the digital asset opportunities Brevan Howard is looking to invest in relate to practical use cases. As Johnson explains,

“What we're really excited about right now is moving beyond just speculative trading and where are the real world use cases that we're seeing crypto start to gain adoption.”

Episode 98 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block's Frank Chaparro and Brevan Howard Co-Heads of Ventures Peter Johnson and Colleen Sullivan.

Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.

This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Tron

About Tron

TRON is dedicated to accelerating the decentralization of the internet via blockchain technology and decentralized applications (dApps). Founded in September 2017 by H.E. Justin Sun, the TRON network has continued to deliver impressive achievements since MainNet launch in May 2018. July 2018 also marked the ecosystem integration of BitTorrent, a pioneer in decentralized web3 services boasting over 100 million monthly active users. The TRON network completed full decentralization in December 2021 and is now a community-governed DAO. | TRONDAO | Twitter | Discord |