Today, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced that it has acquired fund manager One River Digital Asset Management (ORDAM), which will change its name to Coinbase Asset Management (CBAM) and operate as an independent subsidiary to focus on institutional interest in cryptocurrencies.

The two companies had an existing close relationship. Coinbase Prime is used for execution and Custody is provided by Coinbase Custody by ORDAM, an SEC Registered Investment Adviser. Additionally, Coinbase invested in ORDAM’s $43 million Series A along with Goldman Sachs and Liberty Mutual. Alan Howard is also a patron.

Coinbase said that its platform already supports $130 billion of quarterly institutional trading volume and has $50 billion in institutional assets. It claims that by the end of 2022, around a quarter of the world’s 100 largest hedge funds were using Coinbase. In August of last year, BlackRock enabled crypto access via a Coinbase integration. And he has a relationship with the technology firm TradFi Broadridge.

Earlier this year, ORDAM introduced the Separately Managed Digital ONE Account (SMA), which uses Coinbase Prime for trading and Coinbase Custody, and ORDAM provides investment strategies and indices. It is aimed at wealth managers and financial advisors. At the time, ORDAM mentioned the ability to use this for asset tokenization.

ORDAM CEO Eric Peters will run Coinbase Asset Management and the rest of One River Asset Management, the non-digital side that Coinbase does not own.

Recent surveys on institutional interest in digital assets show that interest varies depending on the type of investor. A Fidelity survey late last year showed strong interest and engagement from crypto hedge funds, high net worth individuals, and financial advisers. However, traditional hedge funds, endowments and pension funds are much less enthusiastic. Their survey found that only 7% of traditional hedge funds have cryptocurrency investments.

The JP Morgan e-commerce survey released last month said that 72% of traders had no plans to trade cryptocurrency and 14% were already operating or planning to within a year.