Bitwise Lists Crypto Index Fund on US OTC Market

San Francisco-based Bitwise Asset Management announced on Wednesday that it has publicly listed one of its cryptocurrency funds, 10 Crypto Index Fund, on the OTCQX over-the-couter (OTC) market.

This listing has allowed the investors to invest in the fund with a traditional brokerage account in the United States. Earlier, Bitwise was only offering investments through private placements.

“Crypto is the best-performing asset class in the world this year, and the outlook for 2021 is strong,” Bitwise’s chief investment officer, Matt Hougan said. 

“The start of public trading for shares of BITW will make it significantly easier for financial advisers, family offices, individuals, and institutional funds to allocate to the space. We believe the Fund offers a robust, one-stop solution.”

Index Fund Investment Comes to Crypto 

Bitwise manages four cryptocurrency funds and a separate one in partnership with Morgan Creek Digital Assets, as seen on its website. Out of them, two are index funds, while the others are Bitcoin and Ethereum funds respectively.

The company earlier made multiple attempts to list a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) on US stock exchanges, but its proposals were squashed by the market regulator.

The publicly listed Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund tracks the Bitwise 10 Large Cap Crypto Index, a market-cap-weighted index, tracking ten major digital currencies. By the end of November, the fund held around 75 percent in Bitcoin, 13 percent in Ethereum, and the remaining 12 percent in other cryptocurrencies.

The open-ended fund was started with around $120 million in initial assets under management (AUM) and turned a profit of 184 percent on a year-to-date basis.

The listing under the ticker ‘BITW’ came after the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) reviewed a Form 211 for quotation of the fund’s shares.

Though there are several established crypto fund managers now, Grayscale remained the leader with a total AUM of $12.6 billion. Grayscale also operates a publicly-listed Digital Large Cap fund that has an AUM of over $170 million.