Mark Yusko’s Morgan Creek Digital Partners with Bitwise to Launch Institutional Index Fund
Photo by Tania Shevereva on Unsplash
Morgan Creek Digital, the crypto-focused arm of Bitcoin bull Mark Yusko’s multi-billion-dollar investment advisory firm Morgan Creek Capital, has joined hands with Bitwise Asset Management to launch a cryptocurrency index fund for institutions and elite investors.
![Bitwise Launches Three New Crypto Index Funds](https://cryptoslate.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/bitwise-lunchs-3-new-crypto-social-300x158.jpg)
According to a press release, the duo’s Digital Asset Index Fund is open for business and welcoming “approved institutional and accredited investors” to invest in a basket of the top-10 largest cryptocurrencies weighted by market capitalization.
The fund appears to have factored in the current merry-go-round of the top-10, however, and will have further criteria when qualifying an asset for inclusion–namely its “custody qualifications, trade concentration limits and pre-mine restrictions.”
Presumably, prospective investors will place faith in the fund’s manager, Bitwise, who claims to have engineered the world’s first cryptocurrency index fund and cites management experience from BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and other U.S. financial heavyweights.
Hunter Horsley, CEO of Bitwise, appeared to hold his new partners in equal esteem, stating:
“We’re thrilled to partner with visionaries like Mark, Anthony and the rest of the Morgan Creek Digital team to bring this new fund to market. They’re thought leaders, experts in asset allocation and have spent over a decade earning the trust of their clients and institutional investors.”
Institutions Ahoy
Having perked up from the 10-month lows seen in mid-August, the cryptocurrency market may have been more than a stone’s throw away from the heights of January’s bull market. Yet in the context of these record lows, Morgan Digital partner Anthony Pompliano explained that institutional customers are wanting to strike while the iron is hot:
“Institutional investors are seeing the market pullback as an opportunity start building exposure to the space, and have been pushing us to get this fund to market quickly.”
Morgan Digital’s client base of “endowments, foundations, pensions, wealthy families and sovereign wealth funds” do not appear to be alone in this desire.
Armed with a sheer number of similar deals inked in recent months, one would have plenty of ammunition to argue that institutional appetite for cryptocurrency is at its all-time high.
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As the SEC considers a mounting pile of Bitcoin ETF proposals, institutional investors appear to have dived with conviction into the Bitcoin futures market. Additionally, the industry has seen a plethora of infrastructural initiatives like Coinbase’s custodian solution, which aims to organize and potentially secure billions of institutional dollars.
Pompliano would see the fund well-positioned to help investors cut a piece of the rapidly growing pie that is the crypto market, having stated:
“We’re excited to have The Digital Asset Index Fund up and running, creating a one-stop shop for institutional investors intent on securely capturing the significant value creation taking place in the crypto market today.”