The digital currency asset manager Grayscale Investments, and CoinDesk Indexes, a subsidiary of CoinDesk Inc., the community platform centred around the transformation of the financial system and the emerging crypto economy, have announced the launch of Grayscale Decentralised Finance (DeFi) Fund, a new diversified investment product, and the CoinDesk DeFi Index.
The CoinDesk DeFi Index aims to provide a broad-based, benchmark representation of DeFi protocols. The Index methodology includes liquid DeFi assets on a market cap-weighted basis.
Likewise, the Grayscale DeFi Fund provides investors with exposure to a selection of industry-specific DeFi protocols through a market-capitalisation weighted portfolio designed to track the CoinDesk DeFi Index.
The Grayscale DeFi Fund comes as Grayscale’s fifteenth investment product, and its second diversified fund offering.
“Grayscale continues to focus on creating opportunities for investors to access new, exciting parts of the digital asset ecosystem,” comments Grayscale Investments CEO Michael Sonnenshein. “The emergence of decentralised finance protocols provide clear examples of technologies that can redefine the future of the financial services industry. We’re proud to offer investors exposure to DeFi through Grayscale’s trusted, secure, and industry-leading investment product structures.”
As of July 1, 2021, the Index consisted of the following assets and weightings:
- Uniswap (UNI), 49.95%
- Aave (AAVE), 10.25%
- Compound (COMP), 8.38%
- Curve (CRV), 7.44%
- MakerDAO (MKR), 6.49%
- SushiSwap (SUSHI), 4.83%
- Synthetix (SNX), 4.43%
- Yearn Finance (YFI), 3.31%
- UMA Protocol (UMA), 2.93%
- Bancor Network Token (BNT), 2.00%
“This partnership underscores our leadership in creating institutional-grade digital currency indexes,” said Managing Director of CoinDesk Indexes Jodie Gunzberg. “With increasing attention on the innovations within decentralised finance, it’s critical for the investment community to have tools that deliver calculated exposure to this exciting area of innovation. This collaboration offers investors the data and tools they need to gain exposure to decentralised finance into their portfolios.”
The Fund is now open for daily subscription by eligible individual and institutional accredited investors.
As is the case for its other products, Grayscale intends to attempt to have shares of this new product quoted on a secondary market. However, there is no guarantee this will be successful. Although the shares of certain products have been approved for trading on a secondary market, investors in this new product should not assume that the shares will ever obtain such approval due to a variety of factors, including questions regulators such as the SEC, FINRA or other regulatory bodies may have regarding the product.
As a result, shareholders of this product should be prepared to bear the risk of investment in the shares indefinitely.