Today Deloitte announced a strategic alliance with NYDIG to help businesses roll out bitcoin products, including for banking, loyalty and rewards, and employee benefits. These are all solutions that NYDIG has previously been involved with. NYDIG was founded by Stone Ridge Asset Management and raised a $1 billion round of funding in December last year, bringing total funds raised to $1.4 billion.
In May last year, NYDIG partnered with FIS to offer bitcoin via hundreds of banks. Wells Fargo and JP Morgan started offering bitcoin to clients via NYDIG-managed funds.
Also last year, NYDIG enabled bitcoin to be offered as a rewards to the clients of Landry’s – the owner of Bubba Gump, several other restaurants, and the Golden Nugget Hotel & Casino.
Regarding payroll, earlier this year NYDIG launched a solution enabling staff to put some of their paychecks into crypto.
“We’ve already started the journey of bringing bitcoin to all by embedding bitcoin wallets into existing user experiences, powering bitcoin rewards programs, and enabling bitcoin-secured lending,” said Yan Zhao, president of NYDIG.
Of the three applications, the announcement emphasized banking. “The future of financial services will center around the use of digital assets, and we are focused on advising our clients on ways to engage in a regulated and compliant way,” said Richard Rosenthal, Deloitte’s digital assets banking regulatory practice lead.
Last year Deloitte conducted a survey finding that 78% of respondents believe that digital assets would be very or somewhat important to their sector within 24 months. A separate Deloitte survey of retailers in conjunction with PayPal found that 85% anticipate digital currency being ubiquitous within five years.
