What has not yet worked out in the US, CryptoFund AG now wants to create in Switzerland: an investment fund that puts investors' funds into cryptos.
The Swiss company CryptoFund AG wants to bring an index fund into the market by the end of the year, which invests in five different cryptic investigations. Bitcoin and Ether are each to account for 35 percent of the portfolio, writes the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Ripple and Litecoin are also to be on board, a fifth currency is still open. At the moment, negotiations with the future custodian bank in Switzerland were still underway, and the financial supervisory office Finma said that the press release was also in discussion.
The fund is, however, only open to professional investors, ie banks, pension funds or insurance companies. This lowers the regulatory hurdles. CEO Jan Brzezek apparently does not hide from the fact that he is also riding the hype. "The attention and headlines on cryptosis were the reason why we were already looking at the public with our project," he told the newspaper.
The crypt currencies purchased should be kept by the custodian bank. 20 million Swiss francs are already being promoted by investors, with a volume of 100 million Swiss francs (currently around 92 million euros) in the first twelve months. By way of comparison, the market capitalization of the four already envisaged currencies is now 82 billion euros.
Cancellation for Winklevoss twins
In the US, the attempts to launch such a fund were not successful so far: the US stock exchange supervisory authority SEC had rejected the first index fund, which would allow investors to invest in the crypto money on the stock exchange. The financial product was too susceptible to manipulation and fraud because of the lack of regulation of the bitcoin trade.
The SEC decision is a big blow for the twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, who are behind the planned investment fund and have been trying to convince the wardens for three years. Still, there is still hope for the brothers: as the SEC reported in April, it gave the request of the exchange manager Bats for re-examination.
Shut up and take my ether
However, the economic parallel universe Kryptogeld does not wait until the classic capital market joins the party: With the so-called Initial Coin Offerings, or ICO, an unregulated investment form is becoming increasingly established. Potential investors are mainly putting their crypto money into new projects. Roughly speaking, they are crowdfundings, where the project-makers spend a new currency for advance sale and finance the development of their development work.
The Ethereum crypto-currency platform offers a standard of its own, called ERC20, which enables the implementation of such monetary strings within a Smart Contracts on the Ethereum Blockchain. Depending on the project, such a token can then serve as a kind of share certificate with voting rights or as a means of payment within the planned service.