Victory Capital, an investment management firm with over $157 billion in assets under management, has announced its plans to enter the cryptocurrency market with the launch of a private fund.
According to an announcement the firm published, the private fund comes after it signed an exclusive agreement with Nasdaq and crypto-focused asset manager Hashdex and will t be the exclusive sponsor of private placement funds and other vehicles for U.S. investors based on the Nasdaq Crypto Index (NCI), a multi-coin crypto index.
The private fund will be available for accredited investors and will track the NCI. The firm will also offer private funds tracking the Nasdaq Bitcoin Reference Price Index and the Nasdaq Ethereum Price Index. The firm’s President Mannik Dhillon was quoted saying:
We continually strive to provide our clients with the forward-thinking choices they want and believe cryptocurrency is a viable asset class that can be part of a well-diversified portfolio.
Victory Capital’s move into the cryptocurrency space comes at a time in which institutional investment has been seemingly picking up for some cryptocurrencies. Institutional demand for Ethereum kept on rising last month, with products giving investors exposure to ETH now representing more than a quarter of the total assets under management (AUM) of cryptocurrency investment products.
Despite ETH’s recent inflows of $147.9 million, bitcoin products still dominate year-to-date inflows with nearly $4.4 billion, compared to Ether’s $973 million. Bitcoin’s outflows may be associated with environmental concerns raised by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who said the electric car maker would stop accepting BTC payments over its carbon footprint.
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The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.
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