The institutional limelight on digital currencies is as bright as never before as the industry swiftly moves towards higher engagement with institutional investors.
World’s biggest index provider S&P Dow Jones Indices (S&P DJI) launches the cryptocurrency index service next year. Swiss largest stock exchange aims to enable global banks to offer access to digital assets. Bitcoin and Ethereum Exchange-Traded Products (ETP) reached $429 million of investments. All of this in a single week.
S&P Dow Jones crypto index
S&P Dow Jones Indices, one of the world’s best-known index providers, entered the cryptocurrency indexing. The financial data giant confirmed the launch of a global customized cryptocurrency indexing service in 2021.
Sponsored
The crypto indexing capabilities will be launched in partnership with New York-based leading crypto data provider Lukka and will use its crypto-asset pricing data on more than 500 digital currencies.
According to the press release, the growing investors’ interest in digital assets and index-based solutions reinforced the need for reliable price data. The financial data giant expects S&P DJI crypto index capabilities to mitigate potentials risks of the speculative cryptocurrency market:
These new cryptocurrency index capabilities will make it easier for investors to access this emerging technology-driven asset class while potentially mitigating some of the common risks associated with this traditionally speculative market.
Institutional Digital Asset Gateway
Switzerland’s biggest stock exchange SIX acquired Custodigit this week. Custodigit is a digital asset custody platform for financial institutions and a joint venture of Switzerland’s leading telecoms & IT company Swisscom and Sygnum, the digital asset bank.
As SIX Digital Exchange announced yesterday, the new partnership aims to enable Swiss banks to offer “access to digital assets for their customers through a unique Institutional Digital Asset Gateway.”
The gateway will enable financial institutions like banks to develop new financial services. It will also support various parts of the investment process from trading to asset custody and accessing secondary markets. According to the official statement:
This partnership gives banks – and their customers – trusted, safe, secure, compliant yet seamless access to cryptocurrencies and digital assets.
Initial joint Institutional Digital Asset Gateway is planned to be released within the first quarter of 2021.
Crypto ETP breaking records
Bitcoin and Ethereum Exchange Traded Products (ETP) reached $429 million of investments last week, says CoinShares in its latest report. A digital asset investment firm offers real-time audit on crypto-asset ETPs.
As the audit data reveal, the weekly crypto-asset flows done by institutions jumped to record highs of over $400 billion during the last weeks of November. Grayscale Investments was the driving force and processed flows of over $300 billion value.
The institutional investment in crypto ETPs brought total assets under management to a record $15 billion, CoinShares report.
According to them, Ethereum made 20% of the total inflows alone during the past week. The company claims, it is mostly related to higher clarity regarding the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade.
In a meantime, Bitcoin remains the dominant digital currency, with total inflows of $1.4 billion within the past month.
