Crypto news: Citi rolls out digital asset unit

The bank will help its richest clients gain exposure to cryptocurrencies and digital assets via a new dedicated team inside its wealth management business which will be headed by Alex Kriete and Greg Girasole.

‘They will be responsible for developing our future product capabilities, client delivery mechanisms and thought leadership around all digital assets,’ stated Iain Armitage, global head of capital markets for at Citi private bank, and Rob Jasminski, global head of Citi investment management in a memo.

Kriete and Girasole will serve as liaisons to ‘all other business groups at Citi who are expanding into this rapidly emerging space also’.

The new business unit will be responsible for enabling the bank’s clients to invest in cryptocurrencies, stable coins, non-fungible tokens as well as central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

The bank’s move follows similar efforts from other investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan seeking to respond to investor demand despite significant volatility in the prices of major cryptocurrencies.

Citigroup launched its wealth management unit Citi Global Wealth earlier this year to provide a single wealth management organisation combining the bank’s wealth management teams in global consumer banking and the institutional clients group targeted at the affluent segment to ultra-high net worth clients.

The new business is led by Jim O’Donnell and will include the Citi Private Bank and Citi Personal Wealth Management.

French IM targets product providers with new BTC proxy index

Paris-based investment management company Melanion Capital has partnered with index platform Bita to launch the Melanion Bitcoin Exposure Index.

The index tracks a beta-weighted equities basket exhibiting the highest correlation and revenue exposure to BTC to follow the biggest cryptocurrency’s performance in a traditional investment fund format. The index is targeted at banks and asset managers seeking to offer Bitcoin exposure to their clients in various wrappers such as investment funds, exchange-traded funds, certificates or structured products in a European regulatory compliant format.

Using Europe and North America-based companies that operate or invest in the crypto space as a basis, the index is comprised of the 30 companies that are most correlated to Bitcoin, with their weights allocated accordingly. Liquidity filters and weight caps will be applied to guarantee the stability and scalability of the index.

The index has its own set of advantages in comparison to a straight investment in Bitcoin since it closely tracks the performance of BTC in a diversified basket and eliminates usual risks like loss or hacking, according to Melanion Capital president Jad Comair (right).

‘Bitcoin’s main concerns for institutional investors are hack, theft, loss, storage, security or crime. By investing in equities replicating the Bitcoin performance, investors can achieve diversified asset allocation that was not available before,’ he said.

Swiss Stock Exchange onboards new crypto ETPs, trading up by more than 300%

The cryptocurrency segment at Six Swiss Exchange continues to grow at a rapid pace with investors now being able to choose between a total of 100 ETPs and structured products with cryptocurrencies as underlyings offered by 10 different ETP issuers.

The ETP provider made its debut in Switzerland with the four new ETP listings with cryptocurrency underlyings. The addition of VanEck ETP as the fifth new exchange-traded product (ETP) issuer joining Six this year reflects the growing interest in trading crypto products at the exchange, according to Christian Reuss (right), head Six Swiss Exchange.

‘We offer 59 products on the two most liquid crypto currencies with a market capitalization of US$1 billion [and] an additional eight crypto currencies,’ he said.

With a volume of nearly CHF4.6 billion (US$5 billion) trading turnover since the beginning of the year – an increase of 310% compared to the whole previous year - the Swiss stock exchanges has become the world’s primary market place for regulated products with cryptocurrency underlyings.

The four new crypto currency ETPs by VanEck ETP provide investors with exposure to the price of bitcoin and ethereum without having to buy the crypto currencies themselves. Both ETPs are fully collateralised.

S&P expands crypto offering

US index provider S&P DJI has added to its suite of cryptocurrency themed products by launching the S&P Cryptocurrency Broad Digital Market (BDM) Index which provides a wider performance snapshot of the cryptocurrency market and includes over 240 coins at the time of its launch.

In addition to the BDM, S&P will also be onboarding three extra index offerings that include the S&P Cryptocurrency BDM Ex-MegaCap Index, Ex-LargeCap Index, and Cryptocurrency LargeCap Ex-MegaCap Index.

The Ex-MegaCap product is a subset of the BDM that excludes the constituents of the S&P Cryptocurrency MegaCap Index (Bitcoin and Ethereum) while the Ex-LargeCap acts as a subset of the BDM that excludes constituents of the S&P Cryptocurrency LargeCap Index.

The LargeCap Ex-MegaCap index is a subset of the BDM measuring the performance of the constituents of the S&P Cryptocurrency LargeCap Index and exclude the constituents of the S&P Cryptocurrency MegaCap Index.

The new cryptocurrency indices will be incorporated to the firm’s digital market suite launched in mid-May which include the S&P Bitcoin Index, Ethereum Index, and Cryptocurrency MegaCap Index.

21Shares debuts Solana ETP

Crypto ETP issuer 21Shares has launched the world’s first Solana ETP on the Swiss stock exchange.

Solana is an open-source project that banks on blockchain technology’s ‘permissionless’ nature to provide decentralised finance (DeFi) solutions. The idea and initial work on the project began in 2017; Solana was officially launched in March 2020 by the Solana Foundation with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, headed by developer Anatoly Yakovenko.

Solana is known in the cryptocurrency space because of the short processing times the blockchain offers. The blockchain’s hybrid protocol allows for significantly decreased validation times for both transaction and contract execution. One of the innovations Solana brings to the digital assets space is the proof-of-history consensus.

‘European institutions continue asking us for simple and effective access to these new blockchain technologies, said Hany Rashwan (above-right), CEO 21Shares, adding, ‘we expect to add two new crypto ETPs in the next months, together with new listing and trading venues’.

Recently, IBS Intelligence reported that 21Shares had selected CryptoCompare, the digital asset market data specialist, to provide settlement pricing for all of its single asset ETPs. Despite the recent volatility markets, 21Shares have gathered more than $55m in net institutional inflows in June alone across all its ETPs.

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