Launch of new investment product reflects ongoing demand for diversified exposure to crypto protocols leveraging decentralized smart contract technology
NEW YORK, March 22, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Grayscale Investments®, the world’s largest digital currency asset manager, today announced the launch of Grayscale® Smart Contract Platform Ex-Ethereum Fund (“GSCPxE” or the “Fund”), Grayscale’s 18th investment product and third diversified fund offering.
GSCPxE provides investors with exposure to a selection of industry-leading Smart Contract Platforms through a market-capitalization weighted portfolio designed to track the CoinDesk Smart Contract Platform Select Ex ETH Index.
Smart contracts are programs that run on a blockchain that can execute automatically when certain conditions are met. Using smart contracts, users can create decentralized financial (DeFi) applications, represent the ownership of digital property like NFTs, move funds in accordance with conditional instructions, and even create other digital assets.
“Investor demand for diversified exposure has grown in parallel to the ongoing evolution of the crypto ecosystem,” said Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein. “Smart contract technology is critical to the growth of the digital economy, but it’s still too early to know which platform will win – from attracting and retaining the most vibrant developer communities, to ensuring the platform is high-speed, flexible, and scalable. The beauty of GSCPxE is that investors do not have to choose one winner, and instead can access the development of the smart contract platform ecosystem through a singular investment vehicle.”
As of March 16, 2022, the Fund consisted of the following assets and weightings*:
- Cardano (ADA), 24.63%
- Solana (SOL), 24.27%
- Avalanche (AVAX), 16.96%
- Polkadot (DOT), 16.16%
- Polygon (MATIC), 9.65%
- Algorand (ALGO), 4.27%
- Stellar (XLM), 4.06%
“Many investors allocated to ETH given its explosive growth over the past year, so now there is demand to get exposure across the rest of the Smart Contract Platform sector,” said Jodie Gunzberg, CFA, Managing Director, CoinDesk Indices. “The CoinDesk Smart Contract Platform Select Ex ETH Index is designed to measure the market-capitalization weighted performance of the largest and most liquid digital assets, excluding ETH, that meet certain trading and custody requirements, and are classified in the Smart Contract Platform sector defined by CoinDesk Digital Asset Classification Standard (DACS).”
The Fund is now open for daily subscription by eligible individual and institutional accredited investors.¹
Grayscale may attempt to have the shares of new products quoted on a secondary market. Although the shares of certain Grayscale products have been approved for trading on a secondary market, such as OTCQX, investors in a new product should not assume that the shares will ever obtain such an approval because of questions the SEC and/or FINRA may have regarding the status of the product’s underlying digital assets under the federal securities laws.
This press release is not an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any security in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be illegal, nor shall there be any sale of any security in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of that jurisdiction.
¹Each product offers a private placement to accredited investors. The investment objective of each product is for its Shares (based on digital assets per Share) to reflect the value of digital assets held by such product, determined by reference to the applicable CoinDesk Indices index price or reference rate, less such product’s expenses and other liabilities.
To date, certain products have not met their investment objective and the Shares of such products quoted on OTCQX have not reflected the value of the digital assets held by such products, less such products’ expenses and other liabilities, but have instead traded at both premiums and discounts to such value, which at times have been substantial.
*Holdings and weightings are subject to change
About Grayscale Investments®Grayscale enables investors to access the digital economy through a family of secure, compliant, and future-forward investment products. Founded in 2013, Grayscale has a proven track record and unrivaled expertise as the world’s largest digital currency asset manager. Investors, advisors, and allocators turn to Grayscale’s private placements, public quotations, and ETFs for single asset, diversified, and thematic exposure. Grayscale products are distributed by Genesis Global Trading, Inc. (Member FINRA/SIPC, MSRB Registered) or Foreside Fund Services, LLC. For more information, please follow @Grayscale or visit grayscale.com.
