Digital currencies will have a “very important place” in finance, according to veteran banker Bob Diamond, even as last year’s market carnage thwarted his plan to take stablecoin group Circle public.

The former Barclays chief executive told the Financial Times that “there’s going to be a lot of good things” that survive last year’s crypto crash.

His comments come only weeks after he abandoned attempts to list Circle, which runs the world’s second-largest stablecoin, at a $9bn valuation in New York owing to poor investor demand.

Diamond has been one of the most prominent traditional financiers in crypto. His private equity group Atlas Merchant invested in Circle in 2021 and later set up a special purpose acquisition company for the corporate float.

The unfulfilled plan capped a dreadful year for the crypto market as prices tumbled and the implosion of big names such as FTX illuminated the volatile and poorly governed nature of vast corners of the market.

“I don’t think as an industry we’re going to throw the baby out with the bathwater,” said Diamond, co-founder and chief executive of Atlas Merchant Capital. “In my mind there is a place for a digital currency, a very important place.”

“Crypto is such a broad word,” he added. “I get frustrated by people saying crypto winter. It’s all good, it’s all bad. We need to do a better job [of explaining]. There are unquestionably sectors, like the technology being developed for stablecoins,…