By Suzanne McGee
(Reuters) -21shares launched its first exchange-traded funds tracking the price of a basket of cryptocurrencies, including ethereum, solana and dogecoin, for U.S. investors, the Swiss-based digital assets manager said on Thursday.
The debut of the 21Shares ETFs marks the most recent push by issuers beyond single-coin spot ETFs and into index products, although the firm is the first to do so under the terms of the Investment Company Act of 1940.
While most ETFs are 1940 Act funds, the vast majority of crypto vehicles have launched as 1933 Act funds, a category designed for riskier assets and underlying structures, such as commodity pools.
“There’s a difference in the tax treatment, and for professional investors, ’40 Act funds are really the gold standard,” said Duncan Moir, president of 21shares.
21shares launched the new ETFs in partnership with Teucrium Trading, which has used the ’40 Act structure to roll out other commodity-linked funds. Such funds obtain their exposure to the underlying asset indirectly, through other publicly-traded securities.
In this case, 21shares will invest in its own exchange-traded products that are listed and traded in Europe.
The FTSE Crypto 10 Index ETF and the 21Shares FTSE Crypto 10 ex-BTC Index ETF ETFs will have fees of 0.5% and 0.65%, respectively.
UPTAKE EXPECTED SLOWER THAN BITCOIN ETFS
Moir expects uptake of multi-coin crypto funds to be slower than the blockbuster growth of the spot bitcoin ETFs in January 2024.
“Those single-coin products tend to be dominated by retail investors, while an index product is likely to be adopted first by financial advisers,” and other professionals who “are aware that no one really knows yet which of these cryptocurrencies will be the eventual winners,” said Moir.
They will make their debut in what Moir described as a volatile price environment. Bitcoin’s price briefly fell below $100,000 this month for the first time since June, driven by growing risk aversion among investors and profit-taking.
They also arrive on the market at a time when asset managers are competing to attract investor interest in an array of spot crypto ETFs tied to altcoins, the first of which launched during the U.S. government shutdown.
Prior to 21shares, only two index crypto ETFs tied to multiple coins have launched. Both are ’33 Act funds. In late September, Grayscale Investments converted its private index fund, the Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund, into an exchange-traded vehicle offering capitalization-weighted exposure to bitcoin, ethereum, solana, Ripple’s xrp, and cardano. It joined the Hashdex Nasdaq Crypto Index ETF as the early multi-coin fund to include altcoins in the mix. T. Rowe Price also submitted a recent filing to launch a crypto index fund.
Bitwise Asset Management is awaiting U.S. regulatory approval to convert its own 10-coin investment fund into an ETF.
(Reporting by Suzanne McGee; additional reporting by Hannah Lang in New YorkEditing by Rod Nickel)
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