Again within the halcyon days of August 2024, FT Alphaville argued that the launch of a leveraged single-stock ETF monitoring MicroStrategy’s inventory was the ETF industry’s shark-jumping moment.
Oh how sweetly/stupidly naive we had been on the time.
Below new SEC chair Paul Atkins, the principle US monetary watchdog will “embrace and champion” innovation, an unsubtle sign to the crypto world that it may well run wild as soon as extra.
The inevitable result’s monetary abominations like this:
An organization referred to as “Canary Capital” — yeah, us neither — has develop into the primary asset supervisor to file with the US Securities and Trade Fee to launch an ETF that may comprise non-fungible tokens.
In response to the prospectus, the mooted fund would “make investments” 80-95 per cent of its property in Pengu, which, apparently, is the “official token of the Pudgy Penguin challenge”. An additional 5-15 per cent shall be held in Pudgy Penguin NFTs, alongside a sprinkling of solana and ether.
It’s maybe an indication of the instances that these latter cryptocurrencies — solely one in every of which (ether) has been permitted by the SEC as a holding for ETFs — are seen as virtually grown-up property compared to its proposed spheniscidae-themed holdings.
Its filing admits that:
PENGU is a brand new SPL token that exists on the Solana Community. Relative to different digital property corresponding to bitcoin, ETH and SOL, PENGU has only a few recognized use circumstances other than a collector’s merchandise . . .
There isn’t a assurance that utilization of the PENGU will proceed to develop. A contraction within the use or adoption of PENGU might lead to elevated volatility or a discount within the value of PENGU, which may adversely affect the worth of the Shares. Gross sales of PENGU which were newly launched from escrow might trigger the value of PENGU to say no, which may negatively have an effect on an funding within the Shares. PENGU markets have a restricted historical past, PENGU buying and selling costs have exhibited excessive ranges of volatility, and in some circumstances such volatility has been sudden and excessive. Due to such volatility, Shareholders may lose all or considerably all of their funding within the Belief.
Spot markets on which PENGU trades are comparatively new and largely unregulated or is probably not complying with current laws and, subsequently, could also be extra uncovered to fraud and safety breaches than established, regulated exchanges for different monetary property or devices, which may have a damaging affect on the efficiency of the Belief. Disruptions at PENGU spot markets, futures markets and within the over-the-counter (“OTC”) markets may adversely have an effect on the provision of PENGU and subsequently their capacity to create and redeem Shares of the Belief. The loss or destruction of sure “non-public keys,” together with by the Custodian, may stop the Belief from accessing its PENGU.
Pudgy Penguins is related to the chance of an funding in NFTs. Investing in NFTs entails vital danger as a result of extremely unstable and speculative nature of the NFT market. The worth of NFTs can fluctuate dramatically over quick intervals, influenced by elements corresponding to market demand, tendencies, celeb endorsements, and broader financial situations. In contrast to conventional property, NFTs lack historic efficiency information, making it difficult to foretell future worth. Moreover, the NFT market is comparatively new and unregulated, which might result in elevated susceptibility to market manipulation, fraud, and different illicit actions. Buyers ought to be conscious that the worth of their NFT investments may lower considerably or develop into illiquid, leading to potential monetary loss.
The tokens are at the very least going cheep, and are at present buying and selling at $0.0103, in response to Coingecko, a dive of 63 per cent from the extent they hatched at in December 2024.
And that’s earlier than we get to the NFTs. The eagle-eyed amongst you’ll have noticed that the entire level of NFTs is that they’re non-fungible. So far ETFs, whether or not they maintain shares, bonds, spinoff contracts and even cryptocurrencies, have at all times held fungible property — shares in Apple, tranches of a given bond and even bitcoin are totally interchangeable.
Bringing in NFTs adjustments this equation. Every of the 8,888 Pudgy Penguin NFTs has a mixture of various traits, together with color, facial features, equipment and backgrounds. Certainly, it’s this very uniqueness that provides NFTs “worth” — at the very least to those that don’t imagine this worth is roughly zero.
Fairly how this may work in a fund construction famed for every day liquidity, continuously up to date internet asset worth, and usually minuscule premiums and reductions to NAV as a result of arbitrage mannequin facilitated by authorised individuals, is considerably unclear.
To be honest, holders of Pudgy Penguin NFTs have to this point had a worthwhile, if wild trip, at the very least if that they had hopped on board at inception.
The NFTs had been minted at 0.03 ether in 2021. The ground value — the bottom value at which any of the gathering trades — hit 21.68 ether in February 2024, a to not be sniffed at rise of 72,167 per cent. That took the market cap to inside a feather of $500mn. The ground value has since dived to round 9.4 ether, or $23,300.
A push to increase the attain of ETFs into the realm of NFTs was maybe inevitable, even beneath a much less supine SEC.
Issuers have filed dozens of purposes for ETFs that may maintain cryptocurrencies apart from bitcoin and ether, corresponding to solana, XRP and cardano. Basket merchandise holding a spread of currencies are additionally within the offing.
Upping the ante additional, in January, three asset managers filed to launch ETFs that may maintain memecoins — missing even the use circumstances often ascribed to extra “conventional” cryptocurrencies — linked to Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
Nonetheless, even these days it’s unclear whether or not the Pengu ETF will ever really occur. Canary Capital might have managed to make a submitting, however that’s a low hurdle to clear. Many advocates for the ETF model will hope it has as a lot likelihood of getting off the bottom as everybody’s favorite Antarctic avians.
Additional studying:
— SEC commissioner Crenshaw rips the agency’s ‘regulatory Jenga’ (FTAV)
— Bonfire of the NFTs (FTAV)
