21Shares Launches The World’s First Polkadot ETP On Swizerland’s SIX Exchange

The world’s first ETP tracking the performance of Polkadot will see the light of day on February 4th, 2021, courtesy of 21Shares AG. The firm will release the product on the regulated Swiss stock exchange and will be fully backed by DOT tokens.

• 21Shares is a Zug, Switzerland-based company with nearly $500 million in assets under management from a dozen ETPs. The firm announced its latest product earlier today following the performance of DOT – the native cryptocurrency of the blockchain project Polkadot.
• DOT ETP will launch as a regulated exchange-traded product on Thursday (February 4th) on the country’s 170-year old exchange – SIX Swiss Exchange. The ETP structure means that investors will benefit from “100% physical collateralization.” 
• Thus, 21Shares doubles-down on its support for Polkadot as the company admitted the blockchain project’s token into its HODL basket as the second-largest constituent after Bitcoin.
• Hany Rashwan, the CEO of 21Shares, highlighted that the DOT-tracking ETP comes as a result of a skyrocketing demand from institutional investors towards various cryptocurrency assets.

• “After investors purchase their first bitcoins through our ETPs, there is a natural transition to invest in other crypto assets. European investors are approaching us to launch new products based on other key crypto assets to enable them easy access without the need for a private key or unregulated wallets and exchanges.” – the executive added.

• It’s worth noting that the leading crypto asset manager Grayscale Investments also showed interest in a Polkadot-related product. The company recently filed documents in Delaware to enable the release of a Polkadot Trust.
• The price of DOT has been on a roll since late December when it dabbled with $5. In the following month, the asset almost quadrupled its value to a new all-time high and became the 5th largest cryptocurrency by market cap.