T. Rowe Price poaches new digital asset strategy head from hedge fund Dunamis

Investment giant T. Rowe Price has appointed Blue Macellari as its head of digital assets strategy.

She will be leading both the development and implementation of the firm’s crypto strategy, according to a post on LinkedIn on Wednesday, which ended with the words «this is what adoption looks like.» 

Founded in 1937, T. Rowe Price is an American investment firm with over $1.3 trillion assets under management. It offers a range of investment products across equities, fixed income and the alternative asset classes.

Macellari joins T. Rowe from Dunamis Trading, a crypto hedge fund where she helped launch a «market neutral» crypto trading strategy, according to LinkedIn. She previously worked as an emerging markets strategist and specialist at a range of investment firms from Elliott Investment Management to TD Securities and Lone Star Funds.

Compared to some other investment firms, T. Rowe has been more cautious on crypto. For example, Fidelity, which oversees $4.2 trillion, launched a digital assets arm as long ago as 2018. News of Macellari’s appointment came as BlackRock, the world’s biggest investment manager, launched a product offering institutional clients exposure to spot bitcoin.

A spokesperson for T. Rowe told Blockworks in April that current client mandates were not well suited for investing directly in digital assets. This spokesperson’s comments came as part of a wider discussion on a T. Rowe survey, which found that 40% of 2,000 children believed crypto is the future of investing.

The company’s CEO, William Stromberg, shared a similarly cautious perspective in an April 2021 interview with the Baltimore Business Journal. He said “it’s early days” when it comes to offering crypto investing to clients but acknowledged that the firm was researching the space.

T. Rowe Price didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from The Block. 

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