While most of the world expected the bitcoin ETF to be the tipping point that would allow institutional money to come into the cryptocurrency market, it seems like the institutional investors have once again had their way despite the uncertainty that looms over the BTC ETF. In fact, according to recent OTC Trade Data, these institutional investors now dominate bitcoin markets with high volume trades. Yes, that is right – institutional investors are becoming more and more involved in the $220 billion cryptocurrency market than many people may realize and this is perhaps because they have been using back-doors for the purchases.

Many people believe that the next bitcoin bull run will be entirely driven by institutional investment which will be encouraged by the acceptance of a bitcoin ETF such as the those that are currently in the works at the United States Securities Exchange Commission.

The Current Situation

While some crypto market data analysts and providers estimate that the daily trading volumes of bitcoin are at around $4 billion, ShapeShift’s Coincap.io has revealed that the actual trading volume of bitcoin falls at around $2.7 billion. Coincap.io further revealed that, for most of the large-scale investment companies, institutions, and retail traders, the global crypto market has not reached enough liquidity to process the multi-billion-dollar trading orders. In other words, major digital asset trading platforms could liquidate large orders but it may have a large impact on the short-term price movement of cryptocurrencies.

Over the Counter (OTC) Trading

A number of high-net-worth individuals have been buying into cryptocurrencies and considering the amounts that they have been spending, it is safe to assume that these “individuals” are institutions or are at least part of them. As mentioned above, a peek into recent OTC trading data reveals a huge interest in bitcoin from these supposed institutional investors.

“Bloomberg reports that in April, daily OTC trades varied anywhere between $250 million and $30 billion, while exchanges only handled about $15 billion daily in that time by contrast. Corroborating this, Circle Financial CEO Jeremy Allaire confirmed that his company is seeing a triple-digit increase in OTC volumes. By contrast, according to data from CryptoCompare, exchange trade volumes are down 80 percent from their peaks at the same time as the increasing popularity of OTC,” reads Cryptoglobe’s comment on the issue.

This over-the-counter crypto market has facilitated between $250 million an $30 billion in digital currency trades per day in April, according to researchers. But, why is this happening?

Well, as it turns out, large digital currency traders like private sales simply because exchanges can move coin prices. Private sales are more appealing since the trading parties can fix the price in advance instead of having to worry about the fluctuations that are rife in the crypto market. Also, exchanges sometimes limit the number of coins that can be traded and this is certainly not ideal for large traders.

Barely five months after it rolled an advertisement policy that banned cryptocurrency advertisements, Google has decided to lift ban with plans to allow regulated cryptocurrency exchanges to buy ads in the United States and Japan. This new policy is scheduled to be rolled in October 2018 and will require the advertisers to apply for certifications within the specific countries within which their ads will be circulated.

The rapid growth in the popularity of cryptocurrencies has been great for the industry but it has also attracted additional scrutiny. For instance, in the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission recently created a Cyber Unit tasked with handling online financial crimes to begin investigating companies that had stakes in the crypto or blockchain industry. The Cyber Unit also issued several subpoenas and charged a number of firms for alleged cryptocurrency fraud. Similar and even worse crackdowns have also been seen in other countries including China and India.

Widespread Rollout

Even though the digital currency boom has been a great source of wealth and excitement, it has been accompanied with quite a number of negative aspects that include spawned fraud as well as high-profile scams, both of which resulted from the lack of well-defined regulatory frameworks. It is for this particular reason that for a better part of the first of the year that many of the world’s leading tech giants – Google, Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat among others – moved to crack down on crypto-related advertising in a bid to stop some of the criminal activities associated with crypto. Unfortunately, the restrictions also affected legitimate crypto-related business and this is perhaps why some of the companies, namely Facebook and Google, have taken a step back.

“We don’t have a crystal ball to know where the future is going to go with cryptocurrencies, but we’ve seen enough consumer harm or potential for consumer harm that it’s an area that we want to approach with extreme caution,” Google’s Scott Spencer cited in June during the company’s original crypto ad ban.

The Updated Policy

While the tech giant’s updated ad policy will apply ton advertisers all over the world, the advertisements will only be allowed to run in Japan and the United States – hopefully, this will also change soon. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier the advertisers will be required to apply for certifications from each of the countries that they wish to advertise in (which are now only Japan and the U.S.) to have their ads served in those countries.

“The Google Ads policy on Financial products and services will be updated in October 2018 to allow regulated cryptocurrency exchanges to advertise in the United States and Japan. Advertisers will need to be certified with Google for the specific country in which their ads will serve. Advertisers will be able to apply for certification once the policy launches in October. This policy will apply globally to all accounts that advertise these financial products. For more details, see About restricted financial products certification. The Financial products and services page will be updated once the policy goes into effect,” Google wrote.