Bitwise Lists Crypto Index Fund

Bitwise – the cyrptocurrency asset manager- has enabled the trading  of their crypto index fund for traditional brokerage accounts. Previously, the Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund  was only available through private placement purchases.

 

Shares of the Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund (ticker: BITW) traded more than $67m in their first 3 days on OTCQX Best Market®, becoming the most highly traded crypto fund launch in history.https://t.co/4KOrhTGs21 pic.twitter.com/H7dWfkopUo

— Bitwise (@BitwiseInvest) December 14, 2020

The high trading volume in just the first 3 days could be a signal that there is more retail demand for broad exposure to cryptocurrency than previously expected.

Now the index is listed on OTCX, backed by the OTC Markets group. This essentially makes the Bitwise Crypto Index publicly tradeable. This will be the second publicly traded crypto index on the market with Grayscale’s funds being it’s main competitor. Gray Scales competing product is called the Digital Large Cap Fund (GLDC), but Bitwise executives have commented that GLDC is not a true index fund as it holds a basket of five crypto assets but does not track any index.

Bitwise’s index fund is listed under the ticker BITW and tracks the top 10 largest crypto assets by market cap. The assets making up this index are checked for liquidity and re-balanced on a monthly basis. Index funds are the primary way that investors gain exposure to the traditional markets, the same may soon happen for the crypto markets.

The BITW Index Fund had $138 million in assets under management as of December 15, 2o2o. It is currently made up of primarily Bitcoin, followed by an large allocation to Ethereum. The remaining portions of the fund are allocated evenly towards XRP, Litecoin, Chainlink, Tezos, and other cryptocurrencies.

Funds like this created by Bitwise  make crypto investing more approachable for traditional investors that are unwilling to part with their brokerage. There are definitely advantages to crypto index investing with Bitwise in terms of famarlirty with the same brokerage portals you use for all your other investments, but one has to wonder how index funds like this stack up to their DeFi alternatives like the  DeFi Pulse Index, PieDao Indexes, and more recently Powerpool Indexes.

Keep up with Bitwise by following their Twitter.