The Swiss fintech is regarded here – and now also in the U.S. – as a pioneer in crypto financial products. With the gains for tokens and coins, 21Shares is now on a roll.
21Shares, the Swiss provider of index products based on digital investments, says that it has reached a key milestone. This fintech firm, which has its head office in Zurich, announced in a press release that it now manages client assets of over 5 billion U.S. dollars across its various investment offerings. The startup reached the 1 billion dollar mark in 2021, and as of the end of 2022 assets under management stood at 2.39 billion dollars.
It has not published any profitability or valuation data.
Massive Gains
The Swiss firm in large part has the huge gains by tokens and coins to thank for this volume growth, with Bitcoin having roughly doubled its value in dollar terms over the past 12 months and has now cracket its all-time high at 69,000 dollars.
However, another factor must surely be its launch in the U.S., where 21Shares was involved alongside the fund manager ARK Invest, run by star investor Cathie Wood, in the highly publicized opening up of trading in Bitcoin spot ETFs. The ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (exchange-traded fund) was one of the first ten such products approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this January.
21Shares now reports that 2.14 billion dollars of assets are already managed in solutions traded in the U.S.
A World First for the SIX
Meanwhile, assets of 3.17 billion dollars are managed under the European product range. Back in 2018, 21Shares – then operating under the name Amun – brought out the world’s first crypto exchange-traded product (ETP) on the SIX Swiss Exchange.
The startup benefited from rapid growth right from its early days, and after a funding round in 2022, 21Shares declared that it had reached a valuation of 2 billion dollars, and with it double unicorn status. That was the point, however, at which the crypto markets were heading for a new crypto winter that would not thaw until the end of 2023.
The Best Marketing Tool
Nevertheless, the team led by founders Ophelia Snyder and Hany Rashwan used this difficult period to work on the technology platform and the structure of the company. The organization was also refined: The 21Shares product arm now operates under the 21.co holding company alongside the Amun tokenization project and the Onyx subsidiary.
While the 21Shares founders were pioneers of the scene, crypto has become part of the mass market here in Switzerland. Various cantonal banks and the Swiss Post’s PostFinance subsidiary now offer services linked to digital investments. The rapid ascent of Bitcoin et al. is proving to be the best marketing tool the industry could hope for.
Fluctuations Cannot Be Ruled Out
21Shares’ U.S. founder Snyder hopes that digital investments have finally grown up: «The introduction of multiple Bitcoin-Spot ETFs may signal a maturing market. Generally, as a market matures, it tends to experience lower volatility and increased stability» she recently told finews.ch.
Nevertheless, she went on to explain, this process could take some time, during which short-term fluctuations could still arise.
