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Ken Moelis Is Looking Into the Crypto Space, Compares It to 1848 Gold Rush

The investment banker wants his company to develop expertise in the crypto space before diving in.

Ken Moelis, founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Moelis & Co.
Ken Moelis, founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Moelis & Co.

Ken Moelis, CEO and founder of global investment bank Moelis & Co., said that he is looking into the crypto space for new opportunities in business as well as for himself during a Bloomberg Deals summit Tuesday.

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“Maybe on the personal side, definitely on the business side, we are focused on having expertise,” Moelis said on the program. He also noted that while he believes that there is a lot of capital and projects in the market, he remains careful about the sector.

The company is not the only traditional bank that has recently announced it would get more involved with cryptocurrencies. CoinDesk recently reported that Goldman Sachs participated in a Series A funding round of Blockdaemon, a leading blockchain infrastructure platform that raised $28 million.

Moelis compared the current obsession with cryptocurrency to the 1848 gold rush, saying that “a lot of people didn’t know if there was gold in the ground, but Levi’s made a business selling jeans and Wells Fargo made a banking business.”

Helene Braun

Helene is a New York-based markets reporter at CoinDesk, covering the latest news from Wall Street, the rise of the spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds and updates on crypto markets. She is a graduate of New York University's business and economic reporting program and has appeared on CBS News, YahooFinance and Nasdaq TradeTalks. She holds BTC and ETH.

Helene Braun