Barclays is investing in Blockchain and smart contracts. Barclays, one of the world's largest banks, is building a venture capital (VC) unit focused on Blockchain technology, smart contracts and artificial intelligence investments.
Ben Davey, who is in charge of strategy management at Barclays UK Ventures (BUKV) in the past, will focus on creating truly transformative new business lines for financial contribution to the bank.
The Financial Times said the new venture capital is a relatively free jurisdiction, but will not disclose the amounts. However, Ben Davey says they are comfortable with the capital allocated to invest in initiatives focused on this area.
Barclays UK CEO Ashok Vaswani made the following statement:
We are a growing new unit. Our basic job is to provide new revenue growth in addition to organic growth.
In addition to investing in new companies in exchange for capital, the new unit will also potentially enter commercial partnerships and try to launch its own potential ventures. I Davey made the following statement about the subject:
We will be very open-minded about the best of these ideas in the models.
This allows the British bank to declare one of the first in the world to be a venture capital fund, specifically focusing on Blockchain technology and smart contracts. Recently, the Bank has signed a partnership agreement with Coinbase, which will be the first and only cryptographic money exchange to provide instant deposits and withdrawals for the British Pound.
However, the overall relationship between banks and crypto businesses has not changed completely, as Coinbase has indicated. The statement on the subject includes the following statements:
The Barclays / Coinbase deal did not change anything because it was difficult to keep up with British regulations. BarclaysUK still has a complete embargo on any business related to crypt money.
Banks think that crypto-money businesses are at a high risk and that some are subject to indirect law.
With this new initiative, banks can gain access to their own investments by providing full banking or other services, and they can block their opponents by rejecting or withdrawing similar services. Nevertheless, with this initiative, crypto banks can force the banks to be more open to this area by imposing competitive pressure on the existing banks.
