ETC Group Taps Wintermute to Provide Liquidity for Crypto ETP
Market making firm Wintermute will serve as the liquidity provider for ETC Group’s new crypto ETP called DA20, or the MSCI Digital Assets Select 20 ETP.
DA20 was launched on Monday and will track the performance of the MSCI Global Digital Assets Select Top 20 Capped Index, which represents a basket of the 20 leading digital assets. Bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) and solana (SOL) are among the tokens tracked by the index and included in DA20.
The new investment product will first be listed on German stock exchange Xetra, and it will be physically backed. The assets will be held by Komainu, a crypto custody solution that recently set up shop in Dubai, per the release.
DA20 is primarily being considered for institutional investors, according to Evgeny Gaevoy, CEO and co-founder of Wintermute.
“By leveraging our ability to offer competitive liquidity for high-volume crypto trades, investors will know that they are able to best take advantage of any market presented by the DA20,” Gaevoy said in a statement. “We are confident that this product will satisfy the demands of institutional investors, further bridging the gap between the crypto and traditional markets.”
The index that DA20 tracks was developed by MSCI and ETC Group in early March. It doesn’t include stablecoins, pegged coins or privacy coins. It also doesn’t include what it deems “memecoins,” per the index’s methodology.
Additionally, MSCI said it will conduct a review every quarter to determine whether the components of the index need to be weighted differently based on the relative daily return performance in US dollars. These reviews will be announced five business days in advance, the methodology states.
Wintermute, which will be responsible for DA20 trade operations, was the victim of a $160 million breach of its DeFi services in September 2022. At the time, Blockworks reported that the firm’s CeFi operations and over-the-counter services remained clean.
