Boerse Stuttgart, the second largest stock exchange in Germany, reported trading volumes of € 71.2 billion in 2018. Its fully-owned sister company, NGM, is an approved exchange business activities in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland.
The recently introduced investment vehicles are offered to European investors and are launched by XBT Provider, a Sweden-based CoinShares company that earlier introduced tradable assets that track Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) in the Nasdaq Stockholm exchange in 2015 and 2017, respectively. Both are supposedly trading today and represent more than $374 million of the assets invested.
Like the previous investment products of XBT, the tracking certificate for every one of the unique ETPs “a set amount of the underlying asset (LTC and XRP) and tracks a composite index of each asset. When a certificate is purchased on exchange it is then hedged with the corresponding underlying asset 1:1.”
The press release summarizes that with unique product offerings, every qualified EU investor “whose brokerage or electronic trading platform has access to the NGM exchange can add passive LTC or XRP exposures to their brokerage, trading or, in some cases, tax advantaged accounts such as an ISK (Sweden) or SIPP (UK) account.”
Ryan Radloff, CEO of the holding company of XBT Provider CoinShares, said that the latest offerings are a game changer as “LTC and XRP now, effectively, have an ISIN number.”
He also asserted that from now onwards investors who are uncomfortable in dealing with unregulated exchanges, can trade cryptocurrency and other digital assets related product offerings through a conventional brokerage firm.
Tommy Fransson, Deputy CEO of NGM, has the following to say about the offering:
“Investors […] in Sweden […] have demonstrated such strong support of prior crypto offerings. As an industry, it is important for us to listen, though with caution, to the requests of our investors and respond in kind.”
The news article further indicated that the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority has endorsed the prospectus of XBT Provider and the fresh certificates are regulated by Swedish law, but cites that XBT Provider is not a certified financial consultant.
As stated recently, on April 2, SIX, the main stock exchange in Switzerland, has started offering an XRP-based ETP developed by crypto-derivatives related company Amun. In December last year, the European listing of crypto-ETPs began to pick up momentum quicker than in the United States, with Sweden taking the lead since 2015 through listings from XBT providers.