State Street has been appointed fund administrator and transfer agent for the VanEck Bitcoin Trust
Following the success of the Purpose Investments Bitcoin ETF in Canada–North America’s first-ever Bitcoin ETF, it seems the US could potentially follow suit as the VanEck Bitcoin Trust is currently awaiting approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to become the first US-listed ETF to provide Bitcoin exposure.
A press release yesterday announced that financial services provider State Street had been named fund administrator and transfer agent of the VanEck Bitcoin Trust, which will aim to reflect the performance of the MVIS CryptoCompare Bitcoin Benchmark Rate, minus operational expenses.
State Street currently operates in over 100 different geographic markets around the world, and at the end of last year, it held $3.5 trillion in assets under management, with $38.8 trillion in assets under custody and/or administration.
Head of State Street Global Markets, Nadine Chakar, commented, “We see the implementation of digital assets as one of the most transformational forces affecting our industry over the next 5 years, and we are already very actively engaged with clients and partners in delivering solutions. The work we have underway with VanEck is another example of State Street continuing to deliver on our broader strategy of building out the crypto and digital assets ecosystem, which is focused on creating digital cash; custody and post-trade services; trading; and token issuance for these new asset-types”.
State Street already has some experience in the crypto and blockchain industry. In 2018, it developed fund administration services for digital assets in collaboration with crypto reference data provider Lukka, before working with crypto exchange Gemini on a digital asset pilot in 2019. State Street also co-founded Finality, a consortium developing a banking network that uses blockchain as a means of payment-on-chain for wholesale banking markets.
Now, State Street will work with VanEck and, pending SEC approval, will provide services including fund accounting, transfer agency, order-taking, custody of the ETF shares and ETF basket operations. State Street currently services around 70% of US ETF assets and is the largest ETF servicer globally. State Street already services VanEck’s ETFs based in Australia, the Netherlands, Ireland and the US.
VanEck’s Director of Digital Assets Strategy, Gabor Gurbacs, added, “VanEck is committed to supporting financial innovation in the digital assets space. We believe that, when the ETF is approved, the Trust will improve both financial and digital asset markets by providing investors with a simple, efficient, and an institutionally-backed vehicle to gain access to the Bitcoin markets”.