Cryptos: structured products coming to Solana, Exotic Market raises US$5m

The DeFi protocol aimed at bringing wealth management products and services into the DeFi space also announced that its private token sale round continued to draw attraction from the wider crypto industry as the ‘demand for structured products swells’.

Lead investors in Exotic Markets’ US$5m private token sale include Multicoin and Ascensive Assets. The round also included investments from Alameda Research, Animoca Brands, Morningstar Ventures, Solana Capital TPS, and others.

‘Solana’s rapidly rising adoption on the back of its high scalability, efficiency, and low fees make it the ideal blockchain for DeFi products, products, and services,’ said Oliver Blakey (right), managing partner at Ascensive Assets. ‘Structured products will open up opportunities for investors to generate yield denominated in stablecoin rather than governance tokens. We view this as a very healthy evolution of the DeFi space.’

Exotic Markets is seeking to introduce a wider range of ‘sophisticated, and innovative’ structured products in the Solana DeFi ecosystem including single product offerings, including digitals, path-dependent products, and other instruments based on the performance of baskets of tokens.

DeFi Technologies partners with SEBA Bank

DeFi Technologies, a technology company bridging the gap between traditional capital markets and decentralised finance, has entered a preferred partnership relationship with Switzerland’s SEBA Bank.

The agreement will give DeFi Technologies, along with its 100% owned subsidiary Valour, another competitive edge in this nascent space, and outlines a framework for DeFi Technologies to become a preferred provider of staking services, client referrals, market making and liquidity to SEBA, and SEBA to become a preferred provider of custody services to DeFi Technologies.

Under the agreement, both firms will cooperate with respect to asset and investment management including exchange-traded products (ETP) issuance, mining services, tokenisation, digital capital markets and institutional research.

SEBA Bank rolled out a cross asset platform for crypto actively managed certificates (AMCs) in early December 2021. Seba Bank was launched as a fully licensed Swiss digital bank in 2019 to offer a range of services in the areas of asset management, trading, custody and financing. The bank has brought to market several indices and structured certificates including certificate linked to the SEBA Crypto Asset Select Index and the first dual currency certificate on BTC/USD that sells put options on BTC/USD.

Van Eck launches two new crypto ETNs

Van Eck has expanded its crypto offering with two new exchange-traded notes (ETNs) on crypto platforms Avalanche and Polygon.

The Van Eck Vectors Avalanche ETN is a fully collateralised ETN that invests in Avax. The note seeks to replicate the value and yield performance of the MVIS Crypto Compare Avalanche VWAP Close Index. It offers direct exposure to the tokens underpinning the smart contract Avalanche platform.

The VanEck Vectors Polygon ETN, which is also fully collateralised, invests in Matic. It seeks to replicate the value and yield performance of the MVIS Crypto Compare Polygon VWAP Close Index. The note offers exposure to Polygon, a ‘layer 2’ blockchain, which uses software development kit to attract developers looking to build Ethereum-compatible decentralised applications more cost efficiently.

Bot ETNs are tradeable like exchange-traded funds on regular exchanges.

Bitpanda debuts Bitcoin ETN on German exchanges

Austrian trading platform Bitpanda has rolled out its first exchange-traded cryptocurrency note (ETN) tracking the price of bitcoin.

The Bitpanda Bitcoin ETC (YBTC) is listed on Deutsche Boerse and Frankfurt Boerse with a total expense ratio (TER) of two percent. YBTC is fully collateralised and midway cleared.

Bitpanda, which has a valuation of $4.1 billion, said the Bitpanda Bitcoin ETN is the first of many more as it intends to add more crypto ETNs in 2022 and expand its business beyond retail exchanging.

‘Giving a totally EU-based bitcoin ETC with euro as the base cash, we can offer openness to an elective resource class that we feel is ready for a promising circumstance in the current market climate,’ said Eric Demuth (right), CEO of Bitpanda.

The product is targeted at investors seeking to enhance their portfolios and gain exposure to new crypto assets.

With the launch of the Bitpanda Bitcoin ETC, Deutsche Boerse now has 36 crypto ETNs available for trading with a month to month request book turnover of around €1bn. Bitpanda's platform also offers trading in commodities, securities, and ETFs using a mobile app.

Sygnum rolls out DeFi investment strategy via AMC

Switzerland’s Sygnum Bank has launched a DeFi structured investment product called DeFi+ Core which provides diversified exposure to the DeFi space.

The new product was issued through Sygnum's structured product issuance solution and provides exposure to the most established DeFi protocols using a rules-based approach.

The DeFi+ core strategy has been deployed via an AMC, investing in up to 10 of the most established DeFi protocols, across a range of use cases such as lending and decentralised exchanges. Tokens are selected and weighted according to a set of quantitative investment criteria such as market capitalisation, traded volumes, ecosystem growth, and risk scores of the smart contract codes. Actively managed certificates are one of the most innovative, flexible, and cost-efficient investment vehicles available.

Sygnum plans to launch other DeFi related strategies, including one focused on yield generation. This will provide clients with more options to easily invest and participate in the growth of the DeFi space megatrend, which already has more than US$250 billion total value locked within its ecosystem.

The product is available to professional and institutional investors through Sygnum or other banks, with minimum investment size of US$10,000.