Asset Manager Pimco to Extend Crypto Involvement: Report

Pimco’s chief investment officer said some of the fixed-income firm’s hedge-fund portfolios are already trading crypto-linked securities.

By Jamie Crawley

Oct 21, 2021 at 11:10 a.m. UTC

Updated Oct 21, 2021 at 2:50 p.m. UTC

Pimco Chief Investment Officer Daniel Ivascyn (Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg via Getty Images) — Daniel Ivascyn, chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co. (PIMCO), during a panel discussion at the Morningstar Investment Conference in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., on Friday, June 26, 2015. Ivascyn said at the same conference he expects the Pimco Total Return fund to rise to the top and that there is still room for core bonds amid rising interest rates. Photographer: Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Jamie Crawley

Jamie Crawley is a CoinDesk news reporter based in London.

Follow @JamieCrawleyCD on Twitter

Investment behemoth Pimco, which has over $2.2 trillion in assets under management, has dabbled in cryptocurrencies and plans to invest further, according to Chief Investment Officer Daniel Ivascyn.

Ivascyn told CNBC on Wednesday that some of the fixed-income firm’s hedge-fund portfolios are already trading crypto-linked securities, which he described as a “starting point.”
“We’re trading from a relative value perspective. So we’re not taking directional exposure, but we’re looking to take advantage of mispricings between the cash product, popular trust that trades on the exchange, and then the futures.”
Ivascyn said Pimco is exploring potentially trading crypto, but stressed that it will be taking “baby steps” and focusing heavily on internal diligence.
He went on to say that Pimco is “thinking about scenarios where this could take us to ensure that we are competitively prepared to deal with what’s a rapidly changing environment that offers a pretty significant value proposition.”
His comments come in a week that has seen the first bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange – a development some observers expect to accelerate the flow of institutional money into crypto.

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