WisdomTree Expands Crypto App to New York Amid Internal Strife
Asset management giant WisdomTree has launched its digital asset app, WisdomTree Prime, in New York even as its CEO faces pressure from shareholders over the firm’s push into crypto.
The app, already available in 21 states, allows users to buy, sell, and hold Bitcoin, Ethereum, dollar-backed stablecoins, and gold tokens, and has received a charter to operate as a limited-purpose trust company under the New York Banking law earlier this year.
However, WisdomTree’s foray into the cryptocurrency sector has seen the firm’s largest shareholder, Graham Tuckwell, at odds with CEO Jonathan Steinberg’s aggressive decentralized finance (DeFi) push.
Tuckwell, chairman of ETFS Capital, has reportedly urged investors to vote against Steinberg’s reappointment, arguing that the CEO’s DeFi initiatives have been “a massive distraction and utterly unsuccessful.” Tuckwell became a major WisdomTree shareholder in 2018 through the acquisition of ETF Securities’ European arm, a company he founded.
WisdomTree first entered the cryptocurrency market in 2019 with the launch of a Bitcoin exchange-traded product on the Swiss stock exchange SIX. Earlier this year, it became one of the issuers of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States, with its fund seeing inflows of around $70 million while others including BlackRock’s IBIT saw billions in inflows.
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