The blue chip-focused Singapore sovereign wealth fund has invested in a crypto bank, in a signal that digital assets are here to stay.
In an announcement on its blog last week, U.S.-based digital asset bank Anchorage said it raised $80 million in a Series C funding round led by GIC.
Joining the sovereign wealth fund were U.S. venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz, Blockchain Capital, and Lux, as well as Portuguese fund Indico.
Anchorage said the new capital will allow it to «rapidly scale to meet the rising demand for participation in the digital asset space, particularly among corporations and traditional financial institutions.»
It also said that it wants to be a crypto partner to neo banks, challenger banks, and traditional banks, and make institutional decentralized finance (DeFi) participation accessible.
In 2018, GIC was among investors who raised $300 million for Coinbase, a digital currency exchange headquartered in San Francisco, California.
The news came as a surprise as CEO Lim Chow Kiat previously said that GIC would avoid crypto-related investments as it goes against GIC’s investment mandate, which is «to preserve and enhance the international purchasing power of Singapore’s financial reserves.»