Citi VenturesĀ has invested in digital asset startupĀ xaltsĀ alongside Accel India and others. Hong Kong headquartered xalts was co-founded this year by former HSBC trader Ashutosh Goel and ex Meta Asia executive Supreet Kaur.
āThe next leg of growth in digital assets will be driven by institutional participation in the asset class,ā said Goel, xalts Chief Investment Officer. āWe are starting to see the early signs of that with a lot of new initiatives coming from banks and asset managers.āĀ Ā
The startup aims to release ETFs and mutual funds for cryptocurrencies. It also has platforms for tokenizing structured products andĀ tokenized funds.
āApart from investors, we are also seeing a lot of interest from fund managers and issuers to use our platform to launch structured and fund products for their clients. We expect to build a team of 30 by the end of this year across our offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai and Geneva,ā said xalts COO Kaur.Ā Ā Ā
Kaur noted that many institutions are not able to access the crypto ecosystem directly, hence its goal of launching accessible products. When it comes toĀ ETFs, thereās plenty of competition. However, many of the players are targeting Europe and the United States. Existing offerings are from newcomers such asĀ Galaxy Digital,Ā NYDIG, 21Shares and Coinshares as well as incumbents includingĀ BlackRock,Ā Schwab,Ā FidelityĀ andĀ Invesco.
Meanwhile,Ā CitiĀ has ramped up its activities relating to digital assets across the board. Some of that is focused on more conventional assets, but it is also active in the crypto sector. It has invested in infrastructure (BlockDaemonĀ andĀ Talos), blockchain intelligence (TRM Labs) and data (Amberdata).
āxalts is our first investment in a digital asset manager, and we support its vision of creating innovative products to meet the growing appetite of institutional investors for more efficient and robust crypto-access investments,ā said Luis Valdich, Managing Director, Citi Ventures.Ā
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