It is often speculated that 2018 will be the year when institutional money finally begins to pump cryptocurrencies, and the idea is backed by an interesting statistic: one in five financial firms considers launching digital asset trading and crypto investment options in the following year. Therefore, it’s no surprise that financial institutions make efforts to get into Bitcoin and other decentralized assets as quickly and securely as possible.

Today’s breaking news concerns Nomura Holdings, one of the biggest names in finance in Asia and the Pacific territories. The company published a news release to announce a partnership with the cryptocurrency security experts from Ledger, as well as the New Jersey-based digital asset specialists from Global Advisors (whose subsidiary CoinShares has been operating with Bitcoin since 2014).

This collective effort is meant to “pave the way for secure and compliant institutional investment in digital assets”. In other words, the Japanese giant seeks to ease crypto purchases on behalf of big financial institutions, and this project is likely to pave the way to a greater adoption of cryptos in the financial world.

The Nomura press release cites “a shortage of robust safekeeping solutions” which prevents asset managers from building effective investment vehicles. This is where Ledger steps in, with their specialization in secure crypto wallets and their dedicated enterprise security solution called “The Vault” (which guarantees proper corporate-level safekeeping of digital assets).

Another reason presented for this partnership is the lack of regulatory and compliance criteria in this disruptive industry (referred to as a “frontier ecosystem”). Global Advisors Holdings Limited has over 6 years of experience in collaborations with authorities and regulators to integrate Bitcoin and Ethereum solutions, and can provide expertise on how to integrate big financial companies into this brave new world of cryptocurrencies.

Regarding the partnership, Jez Mohideen (Global Chief Digital Officer in the Wholesale department of Nomura) said that

“Global investment managers have long been held back from full participation in digital asset markets, limited by operational and regulatory risk. Our new partnership will set the required standards that will bring peace of mind to digital asset investors, and provide tools and products to enable better integration with more traditional investment vehicles such as mutual funds.”

This is great news for all cryptocurrency enthusiasts, as big financial firms are actively looking for solutions to start investing in digital assets and they’re even seeking collaborations with some of the most successful names in the business. While the first results and their impact are yet to be seen and analyzed, it’s already clear that the next year will bring lots of institutional investments into the space.