As we reflect on the state of web3 institutional adoption in 2023, it's clear that the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region has made significant strides. In this post, we'll explore the growing demand for crypto investment from institutional investors, the technological innovations supported by the government, and the encouraging regulatory policies in the region. At MetaMask Institutional (MMI), we've also spoken with thousands of capital allocators in the past years and learnt about the challenges they face when accessing web3. We'll discuss how the MMI platform has helped them overcome these challenges and become an essential tool for any enterprise accessing web3.

Growing Investment Demand in APAC

Despite the bear market in 2022-2023, the crypto industry has received a vote of confidence from the global private and public sectors. Hedge funds, financial organizations, and Fortune 100 companies increasingly invest in blockchain strategies. According to PwC’s 2023 Global Crypto Hedge Fund Report, traditional hedge funds remained confident about crypto’s long-term value proposition despite market volatility.

Another 2023 research revealed that 90% of family offices include crypto and digital assets in their investment strategies. In the APAC region, crypto has become a significant new asset class. In fact, 52% of affluent Asian investors hold crypto. Furthermore, several financial institutions in Hong Kong, including UBS and HSBC, are reportedly allowing their wealthy customers to trade crypto ETFs. Hong Kong’s Securities and Exchange Commission is also exploring allowing retail investors to buy spot crypto ETFs.

Technological Innovation and Government Support

In 2023, central banks and financial institutions in the region have taken a more progressive stance, exploring blockchain technology and recognizing the benefits of integrating this technology into the existing financial infrastructure. The Monetary Authority of Singapore launched Project Guardian partnered with 17 key financial institutions. The project successfully piloted cross-border currency settlement on public blockchain, tokenized deposit and off-chain asset tokenization. Similarly, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority has launched the eHKD pilot. Findings from both programs have highlighted the benefits of blockchain technology and have paved the way for further adoptions.

Encouraging Regulatory Policies

The increasing popularity of digital assets in APAC has also been bolstered by the growing regulatory certainty in the region.

In Hong Kong, the government enforced a Centralized Exchange (CEX) license framework to facilitate greater market participation. Banks operating in the city, such as HSBC and Standard Chartered, have been encouraged by the government to cater to the needs of licensed crypto exchanges. The city is also looking to introduce a regulatory framework around stablecoins by the end of 2024. Similarly, countries like Singapore and Japan are moving towards defining a more concrete crypto framework.

With regulatory green lights and growing demand, the last piece of the puzzle for mainstream institutional adoption is enterprise-grade blockchain infrastructure, and MetaMask Institutional is key to this infrastructure.

The Role of MetaMask Institutional

MetaMask Institutional (MMI) bridges the gap between traditional financial structures and blockchain technology. The current blockchain infrastructure for enterprises can be fragmented and complex, often requiring multiple tools for custody, reporting, and risk management which results in inefficiencies in operation and high costs.

MMI offers a complete ecosystem that consolidates all essential enterprise services in an easily manageable package:

• Seamless Custody-DeFi experience: MMI maintains parity with the retail MetaMask and is natively integrated with more than a dozen best-in-class licensed custodians, custody technology providers and smart contract wallets. This allows institutions to pick one or a combination of different custody stacks that works best for them while having MMI streamline the trade flow on-chain.

• Enterprise-grade portfolio management system: Organizations can get an overview of token balances, yield farming, staking, NFTs and unclaimed rewards across all Seed Phrase Accounts, Hardware wallets and custody and self-custody accounts connected to the MMI wallet extension.
• Portfolio Management and Reporting: With our best-in-class Portfolio Management and Reporting, organizations can accurately track yield farming, staking, liquidity provision, NFTs and unclaimed rewards.

• Easy access to other web3 primitives:
  • MMI’s Staking Marketplace offers unified terms and conditions across the best-in-class staking providers so that users can get the best staking deal and stake with just 1 click.
  • MMI Swaps allows users to easily swap crypto and exchange digital tokens across multiple decentralized exchanges (DEXs). We aggregate liquidity data to offer you the best price quote alongside optimal gas prices, and the lowest failure rates. In addition, the Swaps fee for MMI is set at 0.05%.
• Comprehensive reporting and auditing tools: In addition to the reporting features in the MMI Portfolio Dashboard, custom Snapshots help organizations generate Mark-to-Market and NAV calculations easily and save overhead on manual reporting tasks.

• Transaction history: Get auto-labeled transactions or for more personalization, users can custom label their transactions
• Pre-trade risk management: For enhanced precaution, MMI users can install transaction simulation and risk-scoring Snaps from best-in-class providers such as BlockAid, WalletGuard, Tenderly and Blockfence.

• Multiple methods of interaction: Users can choose to interact with MMI the way they like, whether it’s through direct usage of the MMI wallet extension, portfolio dashboard, or access MMI programmatically via an API.

Most importantly, wallet security and uptime are unparalleled with MMI. MMI is the only enterprise-grade wallet certified by SOC2 Type 1, and the certification process for SOC2 is in progress. You can also view our changelog here to see how the platform has evolved.

Come Talk to MMI

Regardless of your profile – a founder, fund manager, or representative of a financial institution – MMI is here to facilitate your foray into DeFi/Web3.

MMI currently serves over 200 institutions and is part of the broader Consensys wing, which has pioneered blockchain adoption with an array of enterprise-grade products.

If you are planning a robust digital asset management infrastructure ahead of 2024, we would love to speak with you to see how we can contribute.

Please contact cherry.yim@consensys.io or mmi_sales@consensys.net

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