Galaxy Brings Bitcoin ETF to Brazil With TradFi Giant

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Galaxy Dig­i­tal has launched a bit­coin ETF in Brazil via a part­ner­ship with Latin America’s largest pri­vate asset man­ag­er in the lat­est exam­ple of cryp­to and Trad­Fi colliding. 

The cryp­to unit has teamed up with long-serv­ing hedge fund firm Itaú Asset Man­age­ment as it looks to build a full suite of phys­i­cal­ly backed cryp­to ETFs in Brazil. The IT Now Bloomberg Galaxy Bit­coin ETF (BITI11), which was set to begin trad­ing on B3 Stock Exchange Thurs­day, is its first.

Steve Kurz, Galaxy’s glob­al head of asset man­age­ment, told Block­works that Galaxy would like­ly look to bring an ether-focused ETF to Brazil through the part­ner­ship, as well as more diver­si­fied strategies. 

Galaxy is mon­i­tor­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties in Euro­pean and Asian mar­kets as well, he added.

“As the cryp­to mar­ket devel­ops insti­tu­tion­al­ly, there is a big role for blue-chip firms like Galaxy to act as a part­ner to large insti­tu­tions that have deep client bases yet lack the in-house exper­tise that’s nec­es­sary to build and cre­ate high-qual­i­ty cryp­to prod­ucts,” Kurz said.

Found­ed in 1957, Brazil-based Itaú Asset Man­age­ment over­sees rough­ly $165 bil­lion in assets. Its par­ent com­pa­ny, Itaú Uni­ban­co, oper­ates in 18 coun­tries and has more than 65 mil­lion customers.

“This part­ner­ship com­bines the solid­i­ty and cred­i­bil­i­ty that we have built over more than 60 years at Itaú Asset with the strength and exper­tise of Galaxy as one of the most expe­ri­enced play­ers in the glob­al dig­i­tal asset space,” Rena­to Eid Tuc­ci, Itaú Asset Management’s head of beta strat­e­gy and ESG inte­gra­tion, said in a statement. 

Kurz said it was impor­tant for Galaxy to enter a coun­try that he called “a hotbed of cryp­to adop­tion.” While mul­ti­ple spot bit­coin ETFs trade on Cana­di­an stock exchanges, the US is yet to approve a spot bit­coin ETF, despite dozens of failed applications.

Brazil-based dig­i­tal bank Nubank said in Sep­tem­ber that its cryp­to plat­form had 1.8 mil­lion users. QR Asset Man­age­ment launched Latin America’s first bit­coin ETF in Brazil in June 2021, and oth­ers, such as Hashdex, have also launched cryp­to-relat­ed funds in the country. 

The announce­ment comes after Galaxy on Wednes­day report­ed a net loss of $68 mil­lion in the third quar­ter, an improve­ment from its loss­es of $112 mil­lion and $555 mil­lion in the first and sec­ond quar­ters, respec­tive­ly. Cryp­to mar­kets are also reel­ing from FTX’s implo­sion, with bit­coin shed­ding almost 24% this week, now hov­er­ing at $16,300 — its low­est point since Decem­ber 2020.

Galaxy’s asset man­age­ment arm han­dled rough­ly $2 bil­lion in assets across pas­sive, active and ven­ture strate­gies, as of Oct. 31. Galaxy’s Toron­to-list­ed stock has lost 36% over the past week and 83% in the year to date.

Galaxy’s lat­est part­ner­ship fol­lows its team­ing up with fund giant Invesco in Sep­tem­ber 2021. The Invesco Aler­ian Galaxy Cryp­to Econ­o­my ETF (SATO) and Invesco Aler­ian Galaxy Blockchain Users and Decen­tral­ized Com­merce ETF launched in the US the fol­low­ing month.

The firm also part­nered with Cana­da-based CI Glob­al Asset Man­age­ment, launch­ing blockchain and meta­verse ETFs with the com­pa­ny on the Toron­to Stock Exchange in May.


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  • Ben Strack
    Ben Strack is a Den­ver-based reporter cov­er­ing macro and cryp­to-native funds, finan­cial advi­sors, struc­tured prod­ucts, and the inte­gra­tion of dig­i­tal assets and decen­tral­ized finance (DeFi) into tra­di­tion­al finance. Pri­or to join­ing Block­works, he cov­ered the asset man­age­ment indus­try for Fund Intel­li­gence and was a reporter and edi­tor for var­i­ous local news­pa­pers on Long Island. He grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land with a degree in journalism.

    Con­tact Ben via email at [email pro­tect­ed]

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