Apollo Global Management Inc., one of the world’s largest private investment firms, is starting a new digital-asset strategy and hiring one of the industry’s longest-standing executives for the task.
Christine Moy is joining as a partner after 18 years at JPMorgan Chase & Co., most recently as global head of the blockchain product known as Liink, Apollo said Thursday in a statement. Instrumental in building the bank’s blockchain strategy, she left JPMorgan earlier this year and was succeeded by Sushil Raja. Moy will now be Apollo’s first head of digital-asset strategy.
Apollo “is best positioned to build and invest in the businesses that will propel us into the next phase of the web3 economy,” Moy said in an emailed statement.
Apollo will seek out a range of investments across blockchain and web3. It is unlikely to invest in Bitcoin, tokens or protocols unless there are revenue-generating businesses attached to such projects, according to John Zito, deputy chief investment officer of credit.
“We’re looking beyond Bitcoin to real-world use cases like asset custody, securitizations and marketplaces,” he said in an interview. “We’re going to back specific companies, specific founders, all those who have interesting digital asset ideas.”
The investment firm will write checks of $50 million to $250 million, he said.
“It could be a sea change in terms of how financial institutions operate,” Zito said. “We’re huge believers in the digital-asset ecosystem, its potential to transform the financial-services industry broadly. Many things that are happening today in the crypto ecosystem are probably precursors to what will happen in real world.”
Chief Executive Officer Marc Rowan has previously said the system around crypto is “nothing short of amazing,” and that ignoring it would be a risk. Apollo is expanding into digital assets after making investments in firms including crypto-storage company Anchorage Digital and financial-technology investor Motive Partners. It has also partnered with Figure Technologies to handle mortgages on blockchain.
Zito outlined lending, payments, insurance and content royalties as possible use cases for digital assets. Securitization, loan settlement and know-your-customer assessments could also be done digitally.
Apollo will be a client of the firms it invests in, to help in “de-risking the business plan,” of those firms, Zito said. “The biggest thing about these startups is they need real use cases, and we’re showing them how to make that work for institutions.”