European asset manager CoinShares exercised its option to acquire Valkyrie Funds, the portion of the Nashville-based Valkyrie Investments that yesterday launched a spot Bitcoin ETF.
CoinShares announced it had acquired the option to buy the U.S. ETF business in November, noting that the deal would include the company’s Bitcoin ETF: the Valkyrie Bitcoin Fund, which trades on Nasdaq under the BRRR ticker.
Valkyrie’s application was still pending when CoinShares signaled its interest in an acquisition. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission only just approved BRRR and the other Bitcoin funds for trading on Wednesday.
On its first day of trading, BRRR closed at $13.29 and was down slightly, 1.8%, right after the bell on Friday morning.
CoinShares, which has $4.5 billion assets under management, is based on the island Jersey off the coast of France and is the leading European investment company specializing in digital assets. With its acquisition of Valkyrie Funds, CoinShares will bring $110 million worth of assets under its control with BRRR, the Valkyrie Bitcoin and Ether Strategy ETF (Nasdaq: BTF), and the Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (Nasdaq: WGMI).
“Our expertise has enabled us to dominate the European market, commanding over 40% of all assets under management in crypto ETPs,” CoinShares CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti said in a press release. “Exercising our option to acquire Valkyrie Funds aims at extending our European success in the U.S, offering unparalleled access to regulated digital asset products to American investors.”
So far, it looks like CoinShares will have its work cut out for it. On its first day of trading, BRRR did nearly $9 million worth of volume. That’s roughly 0.2% of the $4.5 billion that all 10 spot Bitcoin ETFs accounted for on their debut. The bulk of the trading was on BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), the Fidelity Wise Original Bitcoin Trust (FBTC), and the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC).
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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Source: https://decrypt.co/212627/coinshares-acquires-valkyrie-funds-brrr-bitcoin-etf
