Speaker 1: Since you're a subscriber to this Bloomberg podcast, we thought
Speaker 1: you'd be interested in a sponsored podcast called Evolving Money,
Speaker 1: produced by Coinbase and Bloomberg Media Studios. It explains how
Speaker 1: institutional investors are adopting the world's newest asset class crypto.
Speaker 1: Here's a recent episode.
Speaker 2: It's early days, right, It's only more recently that we're
Speaker 2: starting to see true institutional adoption start to take hold.
Speaker 3: That's Amanda Gotti, the chief investment officer for PNC's Asset
Speaker 3: Management group, and she's right, true institutional adoption of crypto
Speaker 3: is just starting to take hold. That's what this series
Speaker 3: is about. Who are the big players adding digital assets
Speaker 3: to their offerings? How are they doing it? Are they
Speaker 3: partnering up or going it alone? And why are they
Speaker 3: doing it now? Are they trying to get ahead of
Speaker 3: the crowd or are they reacting to client demand. Well
Speaker 3: we're going to answer those questions and more in this
Speaker 3: season of Evolving Money, a show that explores how institutional
Speaker 3: investors are adopting the world's newest asset class crypto. Hi,
Speaker 3: I mean gi Lao. I've been a financial reporter for
Speaker 3: decades and the people I'm talking to this season, are
Speaker 3: amongst the highest ranking decision makers in the finance industry,
Speaker 3: and that starts with today's guest, Amanda Agati. Now Amanda
Speaker 3: leads the Investment Strategy group at P and C Bank.
Speaker 3: This is a financial services company with roots that go
Speaker 3: way back to eighteen forty five. That's about one hundred
Speaker 3: and eighty years ago. Now. Between their historical roots and
Speaker 3: their two hundred and fifteen billion US dollars of assets
Speaker 3: under management, they are a bedrock financial institution, the epitome
Speaker 3: of old school. So what is an old school Titan
Speaker 3: doing in the crypto space?
Speaker 2: Well, it's just sort of the next natural evolution of
Speaker 2: our investment offering. I mean, we spend a lot of
Speaker 2: time looking at the multi asset universe, and we're very
Speaker 2: much capital allocators. We're in some ways generalists. We're looking
Speaker 2: at public markets, private markets, equities, fixed income, alternatives, commodities,
Speaker 2: structures of various sorts, and so crypto feels like just
Speaker 2: the next natural evolution of the multi asset universe. We're really,
Speaker 2: i think paid and expected by our clients and the
Speaker 2: investors that we serve to understand where the edge is,
Speaker 2: where the next wave of financial innovation is coming from.
Speaker 2: And so, you know, a few years ago we were
Speaker 2: kind of kicking the tires on what crypto looks like
Speaker 2: as an industry. The regulatory environment had shifted in a
Speaker 2: very unfavorable way, and so it sort of shut the
Speaker 2: lights off on some of the areas that we were
Speaker 2: exploring from a crypto perspective. But with a new administration
Speaker 2: and a very different regulatory environment in play here, it
Speaker 2: just made a lot of sense for us to pick
Speaker 2: it back up again. We think it has staying power,
Speaker 2: and so we're trying to understand where we, as a
Speaker 2: more traditional financial institution, show up in the crypto industry,
Speaker 2: how we show up, and how we create access for
Speaker 2: our clients, because our clients are really interested in it.
Speaker 3: When you bring it to your institutional level colleagues, okay,
Speaker 3: and you're having these conversations and you're all discussing, we
Speaker 3: got to bring crypto to our clients. That must have
Speaker 3: been some very interesting conversations. What were those conversations, like
Speaker 3: bringing it to P and C.
Speaker 2: Well, it's fun to look back on it, but at
Speaker 2: the time they were somewhat challenging conversations. I mean, this
Speaker 2: is the way the investment business works, right, It's almost
Speaker 2: never unanimous. There's always Monday morning quarterbacks. There's a million
Speaker 2: different points of view on one particular investment idea or solution,
Speaker 2: and so it took a lot of I think conversations
Speaker 2: and internal debate, particularly as it relates to the regulatory
Speaker 2: backdrop and some of the uncertainty around what's considered bank
Speaker 2: permissible or not right. As much as as much as
Speaker 2: we want to lean hard into being at the forefront
Speaker 2: of innovation and lean hard into new financial technology and
Speaker 2: that sort of thing, we are a very regulated entity.
Speaker 2: We are traditional financial institution, and so this set of
Speaker 2: the outer bounds of most people's comfort level right when
Speaker 2: we think about risk, compliance, legal, cyber security, etc. So
Speaker 2: it took a lot of conversations in hand holding to
Speaker 2: get everybody on board with the idea of what we
Speaker 2: were trying to do.
Speaker 3: So what got it over the line? Then, what was
Speaker 3: the philosophy or the approach that got people on board.
Speaker 2: This is not do all things and be all things.
Speaker 2: This is literally creating access through a really strong strategic
Speaker 2: partnership with coinbase, Right, it made perfect sense to partner
Speaker 2: with them to connect our clients and create access to
Speaker 2: this new opportunity set. I think there are a ton
Speaker 2: of benefits institutionally speaking to start heading down this path.
Speaker 2: We learned how to connect to a completely different trading platform.
Speaker 2: We're learning how to operate in twenty four seven trading environments.
Speaker 2: We're looking at different types of you know, AML and
Speaker 2: cyber related guard rails. We're going to look at and contemplate,
Speaker 2: you know, other coins beyond Bitcoin. You know this, This
Speaker 2: sort of opens the door to what is possible as
Speaker 2: it relates to stable coins. It was important for us
Speaker 2: to take that step so that we can start to
Speaker 2: learn and interact with this completely new and different asset class.
Speaker 3: What's driving the demand now in terms of creating new products.
Speaker 3: Is it coming from the opportunities that you see internally,
Speaker 3: does it come from the marketplace or both.
Speaker 2: So there's a little bit of push pull in terms
Speaker 2: of our organization wanting to lean further into this financial innovation,
Speaker 2: but also to some degree our clients kind of asking
Speaker 2: for and wishing for advice and guidance and education, Like
Speaker 2: what do we think about this financial innovation? I think
Speaker 2: what we're hearing and what we're seeing and what we
Speaker 2: are planning for is that we need multiple avenues to
Speaker 2: access crypto exposure for clients who are interested in pursuing it.
Speaker 2: So some will go direct right, they'll use our solution.
Speaker 2: They'll they'll interact with the coins. It might be Bitcoin,
Speaker 2: it might be ethereum, it might be so long, it
Speaker 2: might be something else entirely different. There are others that
Speaker 2: you want an easier, potentially easier path, and so I
Speaker 2: think the advent of some of the ETFs that we've
Speaker 2: seen have made such a difference in terms of ease
Speaker 2: of institutional adoption. It's easy to incorporate an ETF directly
Speaker 2: into an existing multi asset portfolio, So I think that's
Speaker 2: an opportunity. One of the areas that we've spent a
Speaker 2: lot of time on over the last few years, separate
Speaker 2: and apart from the strategic partnership that we launched with
Speaker 2: Coinbase and the crypto for Clients solution that we developed,
Speaker 2: is really in private markets. Our institutional clients in particular
Speaker 2: often get asked, and this is like endowment and foundation
Speaker 2: nonprofit type of institutional clients often get asked, can you
Speaker 2: take a highly appreciated crypto gift? What would you do
Speaker 2: with it? If a donor were to give you a
Speaker 2: large crypto gift, what do you do? And today it's
Speaker 2: hard because they have to go set up an account
Speaker 2: somewhere to accept it and convert it to FIAT and
Speaker 2: then maybe diversify into other types of exposures. I think
Speaker 2: that's a natural place for the evolution of this offering
Speaker 2: to go. So in MVP one, we're not really handling
Speaker 2: transfers in the way I think our institutional client base
Speaker 2: would like to see. So that's on the roadmap. You know,
Speaker 2: to incorporate ethereum into the offering naturally takes you down
Speaker 2: a rabbit hole of staking, yield farming. There's a decent
Speaker 2: number of elements around what it means to incorporate ethereum.
Speaker 2: I think our clients are very interested in what staking
Speaker 2: might look like and how that shows up within our offering,
Speaker 2: so that that could be on the roadmap for you know,
Speaker 2: MVP two and beyond.
Speaker 3: When you look at risk return correlations and liquidity, what
Speaker 3: does the data tell you about adding crypto into any
Speaker 3: diversified portfolio.
Speaker 2: So we only know so much at this point, but
Speaker 2: based on what we have seen so far, it is
Speaker 2: very much indeed an uncorrelated asset, so there is diversification
Speaker 2: benefits to be had. There's a little bit of a
Speaker 2: scarcity element to how various blockchains and coins are constructed,
Speaker 2: so I think that adds over time to potentially the
Speaker 2: valuation story and the relative attractiveness over time. So we
Speaker 2: do think that there are definitely benefits and unique attributes
Speaker 2: of crypto as an asset class that can add value
Speaker 2: in a multi asset portfolio context. The challenge I think
Speaker 2: at the moment is this volatility component we we see
Speaker 2: is about four times the volatility of public equities, and
Speaker 2: so it's not for the faint of heart. So when
Speaker 2: we think about incorporating into portfolios, that's one of the
Speaker 2: major cons right, how much is a client or an
Speaker 2: investor willing to see some whipsaw in terms of portfolios.
Speaker 2: There are definitely benefits to it that you have to
Speaker 2: be able to stomach somewhat of a wild ride at
Speaker 2: times too. It's not a straight line higher kind of story.
Speaker 2: So we're just trying to be thoughtful about what we
Speaker 2: think the big catalysts and the backdrop for the industry
Speaker 2: might be and where the path forward lies before we
Speaker 2: start making a formal recommendation around it. We really tend
Speaker 2: to be very long only and buy and hold again
Speaker 2: across the multi asset universe. So when we take positions
Speaker 2: in portfolios, they are very high conviction recommendations and they
Speaker 2: are built over a period of time, so I think
Speaker 2: that's an important start place. We're very targeted and very thoughtful.
Speaker 2: We're not hasty about making decisions, and I think that
Speaker 2: naturally applies to how we think about the launch of
Speaker 2: the crypto solution that we created for our clients. That
Speaker 2: was a very thoughtful and targeted and methodical approach. It
Speaker 2: wasn't sort of hastily put together. Anytime we find a
Speaker 2: secular investment opportunity, a secular theme, a trend AI is
Speaker 2: a good example of this. We think crypto potentially is
Speaker 2: another one of those that has a really long horizon
Speaker 2: and a really significant but extended innovation cycle. Those are
Speaker 2: the areas where we want to pick our spots carefully
Speaker 2: and then continue to build over time.
Speaker 3: The discussions within PNC started with questions about investing in
Speaker 3: this new asset class, but they very quickly expanded into
Speaker 3: something much larger.
Speaker 2: So there's all this focus on bitcoin ethereum et cetera.
Speaker 2: But what about the underlying blockchain technology and the use
Speaker 2: cases and the new business models that are being born
Speaker 2: off of that. It's really it feels a little bit
Speaker 2: like the advent of like Web two point zero. It's
Speaker 2: hard to remember what it was like when we didn't
Speaker 2: have uber or Lyft as an example. Now it's so commonplace.
Speaker 2: And so we've spent a lot of time over the
Speaker 2: last few years looking at private market investments, venture capital
Speaker 2: in particular, that has been primarily where it's been concentrated,
Speaker 2: but other elements of the private market or alternative asset classes,
Speaker 2: you can gain exposure to crypto business models or new
Speaker 2: companies that are being developed in sort of the crypto
Speaker 2: industry and landscape, and so for a decent number of
Speaker 2: years that was the primary way for our clients to
Speaker 2: access blockchain technology and crypto oriented exposure. That's fine, but
Speaker 2: not all clients are eligible, or able or willing to
Speaker 2: invest in private markets. You lock up capital for an
Speaker 2: extended period of time. You have to be of a
Speaker 2: certain size and scope and eligibility to even invest in alternatives.
Speaker 2: So the things that we have done since then have
Speaker 2: really been designed to create access and democratize crypto for
Speaker 2: our clients. Then I think the big one is how
Speaker 2: much are we going to learn out of the twenty
Speaker 2: four to seven trading environment for crypto and when does
Speaker 2: that start to apply to traditional markets? Are we going
Speaker 2: to get to it. We've talked about it a lot, right,
Speaker 2: We've talked about the major exchanges extending their trading hours.
Speaker 2: We obviously have you know, overnight in futures markets, you
Speaker 2: know some level of activity there, But does this ultimately
Speaker 2: spill over and catalyze the twenty four to seven trading environment.
Speaker 2: I don't sleep that much as it is. I definitely
Speaker 2: won't sleep in a twenty four to seven trading environment,
Speaker 2: but I think it does make sense to be thinking
Speaker 2: about what that looks like in a not too distant
Speaker 2: future state. So I think there's a lot for traditional
Speaker 2: public markets to actually learn from the crypto industry. That's
Speaker 2: how we're thinking about it, right, We're a traditional financial institution.
Speaker 2: We're learning a lot from the crypto industry. But I
Speaker 2: think it goes both ways, and I think in the
Speaker 2: end there's going to be some really powerful innovations that
Speaker 2: come out of this, and it's still very early innings,
Speaker 2: so we're really excited about the future.
Speaker 3: Adoption by institutions like PNC is clear evidence that the
Speaker 3: crypto evolution is taking hold in the largest and most
Speaker 3: influential financial companies in the world. But the road isn't
Speaker 3: always so smooth. Amanda was pretty clear about the challenges
Speaker 3: she faced trying to earn internal support, and that's going
Speaker 3: to happen anytime a big organization tries to evolve their
Speaker 3: processes and their offerings. So what's coming next. To get
Speaker 3: an answer to that, I asked Amanda for her wish
Speaker 3: list moving forward.
Speaker 2: It's less about me creating a wish list for new
Speaker 2: innovations and new products and all of that as it
Speaker 2: relates to crypto, and much more about bringing within the
Speaker 2: walls of PNC a lot of the capabilities and exposures
Speaker 2: that exist today. I don't need long term wish list
Speaker 2: of ideas to keep me busy. I have so many
Speaker 2: things that are sitting right in front of me to
Speaker 2: kind of lean further into in terms of getting our
Speaker 2: client's access to and getting sort of up the learning
Speaker 2: curve around all things crypto. That know, it's going to
Speaker 2: keep us busy for you know, the next year or
Speaker 2: two it doesn't. It doesn't mean that we aren't forward looking.
Speaker 2: Of course we are. But I think there's a lot
Speaker 2: to chew on, certainly in the new year as it
Speaker 2: relates to just some of the existing capabilities. But we
Speaker 2: just need to lean further into adoption and exposure in
Speaker 2: some of the capabilities that have been developed today.
Speaker 3: I mane you lal On behalf of coinbase in Bloomberg
Speaker 3: Media Studios. Thanks for listening. There are a lot of
Speaker 3: other illuminating conversations in our feeds, so be sure to
Speaker 3: follow Evolving Money on Spotify or Apple podcasts.