On October 11th, XBT Provider, the organization who issued the first Bitcoin ETNs in September 2015, announced that two of their Ethereum Exchanged Traded Notes are to be launched on Nasdaq Stockholm’s platform.
Both ETNs, Ether Tracker One (COINETH:SS) and Ether Tracker Euro (COINETHE:SS), are tracking the price of Ether determined by an index rate compromising the average of the three most liquid of a select group of exchanges daily, XBT Provider stated. The only difference between the two ETNs is that Ether Tracker One is denominated in Swedish Krona (SEK) while Ether Tracker Euro is denominated in Euro.
“The listing of these two Ether ETNs is a major win for European investors who have been requesting these products for over a year now. As of today, if investors want hassle-free exposure to the price movements of ether, they simply call their broker or trade on their normal brokerage platform – that’s truly remarkable. We are thrilled to be able to deliver on investor demand via a safe, familiar route in Nasdaq,” Laurent Kssis MD of XBT Provider said.
Exchange Traded Notes are a type of unsecured, unsubordinated debt security, which are based on the performance of a market index minus the applicable fees with no period coupon payments distributed and no principal protection. Such as ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds), ETNs are traded on the major exchanges during normal trading hours.
“We are happy to be able to provide investors with this new investment opportunity. Given the high interest, we have experienced for the previous listings from XBT Provider it is exciting to now expand the offering into this unique exchange traded certificate. While it is important to acknowledge that exposure to an asset in its early stage of development, such as a digital currency, comes with a risk, trading Ether on Nasdaq Stockholm provides investors with the protection provided by a regulated infrastructure, well-known marketplace and accessibility through their ordinary brokers,” Helena Wedin, head of ETP Services Europe at Nasdaq, said.
A day after Nasdaq Stockholm launched XBT Provider’s two Ether ETNs, on October 12, Saxo Bank listed Ether Tracker One and Ether Tracker Euro on its trading platform. Saxo Bank’s quick reaction to add the Ether ETNs was due to the large customer demand for cryptocurrency assets. As of October 14th, the total market capitalization of the cryptocurrency market is near $175 million and continuously surging up as Bitcoin has fully recovered from the Chinese crackdown on both ICOs and cryptocurrency exchanges, and reached an all-time high above $5,800.
“We have increasing client demand for exposure to cryptocurrencies and I am very pleased that we can now offer clients exposure to both Bitcoin and Ethereum through Exchange Traded Notes. Cryptocurrency markets are still at an early development stage and we find that listed products like ETNs without leverage, offering high levels of transparency, are good ways to include cryptocurrencies in our multi-asset product offering spanning more than 35,000 instruments. We continue to follow the developments in cryptocurrency markets and expect to able to add more instruments to our offering going forward,” Saxo Bank’s Head of Markets, Claus Nielsen said in a statement.
The Ether ETNs are available for trading both via SaxoTrader and SaxoTraderGO. Saxo Bank does not offer any leverage on the assets.