Investors looking to short Bitcoin (BTC) have a new option in Germany. On Feb. 25, Boerse Stuttgart — the country’s second-largest stock exchange — announced the listing of an exchange-traded product (ETP) that is inversely correlated to the cryptocurrency’s price swings.
Hedging against all scenarios
The inverse ETP is issued by crypto fund manager 21Shares, formerly known as Amun. The product offers investors a positive return whenever Bitcoin’s price falls — minus a daily management fee.
Already listed on Switzerland‘s principal stock exchange SIX Swiss Exchange, the 21Shares Short Bitcoin ETP (SBTC) will reach an even wider investor base via Boerse Stuttgart, which last year reported trading volumes of 68.5 billion euro.
Hany Rashwan, CEO of 21Shares, has claimed that “investors in Germany have demonstrated strong support for prior crypto offerings” and the firm is responding, though cautiously, to this strong demand.
SBTC, which trades in euro, is fully hedged 1:1 with the corresponding underlying asset and has been issued a WKN German securities identification code (WKN: A2781V).
21Shares has indeed rolled out a suite of derivatives tracking the value of Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), XRP, Binance Coin (BNB) and Tezos (XTZ), as well as a basket of currencies.
21Shares also confirmed today that its PD3 Prospectus Regulation for existing ETPs governed under Swiss law had been approved by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority.
In a statement, 21Shares managing director said the approval represents a milestone for traditional investors and the crypto community, opening crypto-based ETP products to both retail and institutional clients in Germany and across Europe.
In a past interview with Cointelegraph, CEO Hany Rashwan had pointed to the “massive” demand for crypto derivatives, yet noted that many of the products that exist today remain in the form of options/futures and are “built mostly out of unregulated geographies.”
This situation, he argued, tends both to ward off institutional investors and to result in such complicated and management-intensive products that retail investors, too, are driven away.
Past offerings
Last year, 21Shares — then known as Amun — partnered with crypto asset manager Bitwise on another multi-crypto-based ETP, which tracks the performance of up to 10 cryptos, also for listing on SIX Swiss exchange.
Boerse Stuttgart has previously partnered with European digital publishing titan Axel Springer and Finanzen.net to jointly launch a blockchain-powered trading venue, having previously rolled out a zero-fee crypto trading app.
