Digital asset investment products lured some $293 million last week, sending inflows surging past the $1 billion mark this year, CoinShares found.
And real world assets are the buzzword again as MakerDAO eyes opportunities in credit market.
Let’s get into it
Euphoria surrounding potential approval of a Bitcoin spot exchange traded fund in the US has seen inflows for digital asset investment products surge past the $250 million mark for the third straight week.
Ethereum has been a recent beneficiary.
Ethereum saw its largest inflows since August 2022 of $49 million, “with the last two weeks signifying a real turnaround in sentiment,” CoinShares said in a report.
At some $44 billion, total assets under management in crypto is now the highest since a raft of fund collapses in May 2022, the firm said.
Tokenisation boom
Meanwhile, MakerDAO may soon be eager to start tokenising private credit and collateralised loan obligations.
That’s a potentially massive opportunity. The private credit market is worth $1.5 trillion.
Allan Pedersen, CEO of asset manager Monetalis Group told DL News that the protocol could chase double-digit yields in those markets.
Monetalis manages Maker’s liquid bond strategy, and its vault is worth around $1.2 billion.
Maker has experience tokenising real-world assets.
There’s a wave of optimism about broad-based tokenisation — tracking and trading digital representations of assets on blockchains — of assets like US government bonds.
Banks see tokenisation as a shortcut to automating complicated trading processes.
And in the current interest rate environment, investment firms like Franklin Templeton see high demand for US Treasuries, which are offering risk-free 5% yields.
At the same time, regulators are helping.
The European Union, for instance, has a sandbox where banks, asset managers, and others can experiment with tokenisation without falling foul of regulation.
Pedersen predicted that real-world asset investment will move fully on-chain as soon as the next six months.
Private credit and CLOs won’t be as quick — it will be at least another year before those assets are fully tokenised, he said.
Crypto market movers
- Bitcoin is down 1.2% in the last 24 hours, reaching $36,736.
- Ethereum rose by 1.8% in the same period, at $2,089.
What we’re reading
- The best crypto tax software of 2023 — Milk Road
- FOMO is back in the stock market as investors see a Santa rally — Wall Street Journal
- MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin stash valued at $5,800,000,000: You won’t believe the unrealised profit — Milk Road
- Binance co-founder sticks by CZ as other execs walk — who is former TV host Yi He? — DL News