ETC Group to launch bitcoin ETP on Deutsche Boerse

[fillippone]

Very nice find! I was actively looking for this address, but I failed to find it. Can you share your source please?
At least it closely resemple my "BTC HELD" graph....

The address is published here https://btc-etc.com/product/#cryptocurrencyetps in the 'structure' section of the document.

This one gives a clearer impression of the growth rate - https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/35pgGeez3ou6ofrpjt8T7bvC9t6RrUK4p6

Early days still but impressively rapid. Nearly 2000 BTC added in a week.

Excrement!
Yes, pretty impressive growth. One tought those rate of buying were a prerogative of Square and Grayscale only... well, there is another player here.


Edit: I noticed in the graph the “multisig 2-of-3” part. Quite interesting.

[1714655274]

1714655274

[fillippone]

And now, also the short version is available:

 First Centrally Cleared Short Bitcoin ETP Launched on Deutsche Boerse Xetra

Switzerland’s 21Shares, the issuer of over eleven cryptocurrency ETPs, announced its new Short Bitcoin ETP (SBTC) (Ticker: 21XS) will be available to trade on Deutsche Boerse Xetra starting September 1st.

With its listing, the SBTC becomes the world’s first centrally cleared short Bitcoin product that is admitted to Deutsche Boerse Xetra’s regulated market. The ETP reduces counterparty risk—the possibility that the other party may not honor a trade—for both institutional and retail investors when trading with their conventional brokers.

Ticker: SBTC - WKN A2781V - Ticker 21XS

Product Details
Sponsor 21Shares AG
Launch Date 2020 Jan 22
Product Ticker SBTC
Underlying Short Bitcoin
Investment Objective Track the daily inverse performance of Bitcoin
Fee 2.5% per annum + applicable lending fee
Securities Outstanding 10,000
Product ISIN CH0514065058
Valor 51406505
Reuters SBTC.S
Bloomberg SBTC SW
Custodian Bank Frick & Co. AG
iNAV DE000SLA9204

Fact Sheet:
https://21shares.com/img/uploads/sbtc-factsheet-july-2020.pdf

Final Terms:
https://21shares.com/img/uploads/sbtc-eu-final-terms.vf31.08.2020.pdf

[exstasie]

And now, also the short version is available:

First Centrally Cleared Short Bitcoin ETP Launched on Deutsche Boerse Xetra

Very cool. I've always wanted to see an inverse ETF-like instrument for BTC. Unfortunately it rebalances on a daily basis (and also doesn't employ leverage) so it isn't appropriate for swing trading, mainly just for intraday scalping.

I see it's listed on the Deutsche Boerse Xetra, SIX Swiss, and Boerse Stuttgart. Any idea where to find the actual live tickers (not just the fact sheets), with volume and order book info?

[fillippone]

<...>
 I see it's listed on the Deutsche Boerse Xetra, SIX Swiss, and Boerse Stuttgart. Any idea where to find the actual live tickers (not just the fact sheets), with volume and order book info?

I have no clue Sir, but for sure I will be on the case to discover this for you and the other fellow reader.
Rebalancing is, I guess, a common feature of those “fixed leverage” instruments, as they are meant to pay the daily percentual appreciation only.

[fillippone]

<...>
 I see it's listed on the Deutsche Boerse Xetra, SIX Swiss, and Boerse Stuttgart. Any idea where to find the actual live tickers (not just the fact sheets), with volume and order book info?

I have no clue Sir, but for sure I will be on the case to discover this for you and the other fellow reader.
Rebalancing is, I guess, a common feature of those “fixed leverage” instruments, as they are meant to pay the daily percentual appreciation only.

You can find a good review on many websites:
https://www.morningstar.it/it/etf/snapshot/snapshot.aspx?id=0P0001J2NG

Order book (only first level) you can find those here:
https://www.boerse-stuttgart.de/de-de/produkte/etps/etns/stuttgart/a2781v-21shares-short-bitcoin-sbtc-etp


For depth book level I am afraid you should address your home banking:
https://www.boerse-stuttgart.de/de-de/produkte/etps/etns/stuttgart/a2781v-21shares-short-bitcoin-sbtc-etp/brokerlink

There are many websites: the best one is really down to personal preferences.

[tyz]

Both points very true.
Germany has a very crypto-friendly regulations...

If you would ever had the experience with the tax office regarding crypto in Germany, you wouldn't dare to make such a statement Seriously, Germany may be ahead of some states in crypto regulation, but there are still so many unclear issues that often make it difficult to handle with crypto. I have friends in Switzerland and Austria where many things are much easier and more regulated than in Germany. That there is an ETP is also nothing special.

[exstasie]

Both points very true.
Germany has a very crypto-friendly regulations...

If you would ever had the experience with the tax office regarding crypto in Germany, you wouldn't dare to make such a statement Seriously, Germany may be ahead of some states in crypto regulation, but there are still so many unclear issues that often make it difficult to handle with crypto. I have friends in Switzerland and Austria where many things are much easier and more regulated than in Germany. That there is an ETP is also nothing special.

Easy or not, I'd be ecstatic to be able to hold for 1+ year and not pay any capital gains tax. Sounds pretty crypto-friendly to me. That's a pipe dream on this side of the Atlantic.

[fillippone]

Both points very true.
Germany has a very crypto-friendly regulations...

If you would ever had the experience with the tax office regarding crypto in Germany, you wouldn't dare to make such a statement Seriously, Germany may be ahead of some states in crypto regulation, but there are still so many unclear issues that often make it difficult to handle with crypto. I have friends in Switzerland and Austria where many things are much easier and more regulated than in Germany. That there is an ETP is also nothing special.

Easy or not, I'd be ecstatic to be able to hold for 1+ year and not pay any capital gains tax. Sounds pretty crypto-friendly to me. That's a pipe dream on this side of the Atlantic.

I would be more than ready to wear sock with sandals, learn German grammar and wear short deer trousers in order to being able to avoid any capital gains taxation on my cryptos.
In case, autobahn would be actually a plus.

[el kaka22]

It is not about easy or difficult, it is about regulations and how well they are done. Right now in my nation there is no regulations, we are so far off than all other nations that our nation doesn't even see it as money so we can do whatever we want without ever worrying about taxes. So, that means am I living in a nation that is easy to use crypto? Obviously I do, I can cash out a million dollars and not pay a single cent and it would still be cool.

However does that mean it is a good thing? Of course not because I am doing this knowing that one day it will be taxed and I am worried how will it be taxed, considering Germany already planned out everything with its regulations, I rather have that over mine. Having regulations that is making it harder is better than having the fear of regulations one day.

[tyz]

Both points very true.
Germany has a very crypto-friendly regulations...

If you would ever had the experience with the tax office regarding crypto in Germany, you wouldn't dare to make such a statement Seriously, Germany may be ahead of some states in crypto regulation, but there are still so many unclear issues that often make it difficult to handle with crypto. I have friends in Switzerland and Austria where many things are much easier and more regulated than in Germany. That there is an ETP is also nothing special.

Easy or not, I'd be ecstatic to be able to hold for 1+ year and not pay any capital gains tax. Sounds pretty crypto-friendly to me. That's a pipe dream on this side of the Atlantic.

Well, if you hold it less than a year you pay your personal income tax on gains what means up to 45%. This in turn is then no longer crypto-friendly. The 1+ year rule is not a crypto specific rule and was just overtaken from non-monetary goods where this tax approach is applied for decades, just as for Gold, Silver and similar assets. If it would be regulated properly, then it should be equated with share profits, on which one pays a lump sum of 25% in Germany no matter how long one holds the shares. This would be really crytpo-friendly.

[fillippone]

A little update on the Flows observed By BTCE.
With BTC losing ground, we observed the first outflows from the funds.
Nothing to worry about, but quite a strange coincidence:




On the first graph we can see  the NAV and the fund's price: here we can see that those are closely related, as highlighted on the second graph: the price's premium on the NAV has been consistently below 1%, averaging 0.76% since inception.

We saw that following drop in prices (top graph) we had a fund outflow. It happened on Aug 26th , and also happened on Sep 4th, the last day on the graph (fund flows are made public on the following day).
The thing that  I just discovered is the public address of the fund has still to register this outflow:



We see that on Sep 4th there is no outflow.

This is confirmed on the historic balances:



Actually today it recorded a slight increase in the funds. This is something puzzling me and I am going to investigate about.

The first thing I notice is that the drop I see recorded on Aug 26th is actually mirrored in a Aug 27th outflow in the wallet, so some lag might be involved, but today we are already lagging one day, and we have an increase.

I am going to update the Spreadsheet later today, trying to find an answer to this conundrum.

[fillippone]

I finally found a few hours to update the spreadsheet, fixing a few typos, an error in the computation of the "Cryptocurrency Entitlement" and verifying the information flows from the different  sources.

To monitor the ETP we have three sources:

• the "NAV History" excel linked on the HanETF website
• the public wallet of the ETP
• the information from financial infoproviders.

All three sources should be giving the same results, as the ETP transparency supposedly is a selling point of this product.

These are the results:



As you can see, the information from the fund's distributor is compatible with that observed on the blockchain, at least until August 26th.
From this date on  there are differences that are difficult to reconcile. As you can see this "misalignment" between the two reports, it is not attributable only to the "mismatch" of a few hours with respect to the NAV reporting, probably due to different rules for reporting and for the execution of trades on the Blockchain.

The third source is the one publicly available from financial info providers, and the results are pretty much comparable to the information from the fund. Still, there are a few notable differences (that shouldn't be there)

However, looking at the bright side, I am pleased to notice that the inflows have continued: we are now at almost 5,000 BTC.

[NotATether]

I wonder if there are any other bitcoin ETPs or ETFs like BTCE that pose a reasonable alternarive to Grayscale. Specifically, one that is listed on a US exchange for US investors to buy. I can't seem to find any on Google.
From which site are you plotting your BTCE trading graphs from? I'd like to try it and see how many indicators I can plot at once. Currently I get my graphs from Tradingview which only lets me plot 3 indicators at once.

[fillippone]

I wonder if there are any other bitcoin ETPs or ETFs like BTCE that pose a reasonable alternarive to Grayscale. Specifically, one that is listed on a US exchange for US investors to buy. I can't seem to find any on Google.

There is a limited choice actually.

I answered on my other thread, as I think is more relevant there:
Everything you wanted to know about Grayscale BTC Trust but were afraid to ask!

Hope it helps.

[RealMalatesta]

Obviously these are just the start, we are going to have a lot more than these, we are going to have a lot of options and people will use them a lot as well because these are a lot more trustworthy to people who are used to traditional markets.

If you see people buying into grayscale but not buying bitcoin directly, that is because it is easier for them, specially for people who are over certain age because they believe it is a long term investment (which they are right) and short term is too volatile for them which means they are already old and they do not want that volatility and if they will ever get into crypto it would be via something like grayscale. When those companies make a profit others will see and they will get into the same thing as well giving us a lot more option.

[fillippone]

It is end of Quarter, and it's time to summarise a little bit for our favourite ETP.

The fund price has been tracking the NAV quite closely, and the HELD BTC grew consistently:



Forget Grayscale average premium of 10%, here we are talking about a less than 1% premium of the price over the NAV: basically a tracking error.

The fund ended the quarter with 5,256 BTC under management.



The only thing that doesn't add up is the public wallet of the fund holding far less BTC than expected:



In the last two days there were a  couple of outflow that aren't justified by fund redemptions.

It might be related to some kind of pee payment for EoQ, but the amount is too different from what I would have expected.

I will try to discover haw those are justified.

[fillippone]

I had a tough about this apparent discrepancy betweenwallet fund and shares informations.

There are at least a couple of reasons why this could have happened:

• Someone withdrew their funds from the ETF. The “physical put option”, as they call it (quite confusingly in my opinion), allot investors to take the physical delivery of their bitcoin belt in the ETF. This would result on an outflow from the ETF address and a corresponding drop in the controlled shares. This didn’t happen so it is not probably the cause.
• The wallet manager moved the fund to a different address for whatever reason. Either accounts or security protocol reason could be two of many legit drivers for this.
  It might be in reality the ETF fund is not only a single address but a proper wallet with various addresses.
  Anyway in this case funds are still under ETF control,and shares aren’t decreased.
  This is probably what actually happened, as in a statement, the controller of the fund declared the controlled funds are above fund’s obligations.
  If you check the following link you will be able to check funds total assets.

Of course these are only educated guesses on what happened. It would be nice to it would be nice to have some information disclosed on both those two facts.

[fillippone]

it is almost end of Month, and I want to recap the news about our favourite ETP.

Month has been quite good:



Some decent and above all steady inflow have been observed in the last weeks, in correlation with BTCUSD positive momentum.

According to my numbers, that you can check in the spreadsheet, the funds holds 6,434 BTC, up a neat 22% from the start of the month.


We can check the amounts held in the wallet are greater than the required holding, from APEX, the third part accounting check:



Check the original document here.

Oddly enough, the total number of shares is not consistent with the official number in the hanETF website.

We can see that the official wallet has not yet returned back in line with fund's AUM.



Probably the custodian moved the funds away from to the main depositary wallet to another undisclosed cold wallet.

I suspect it would be in fund's better interest to clearly state the list of addresses involved in their custody contract.

[exstasie]

Probably the custodian moved the funds away from to the main depositary wallet to another undisclosed cold wallet.

Or maybe this is the beginning of their fractional reserve practices.

Sort of an odd amount to withdraw to cold storage, no? If I'm reading the data correctly, it's 335 BTC short from an expected 6,366 BTC in the disclosed address. Maybe there was a redemption that hasn't been reflected in the statement of assets yet.

[fillippone]

Probably the custodian moved the funds away from to the main depositary wallet to another undisclosed cold wallet.

Or maybe this is the beginning of their fractional reserve practices.

Sort of an odd amount to withdraw to cold storage, no? If I'm reading the data correctly, it's 335 BTC short from an expected 6,366 BTC in the disclosed address. Maybe there was a redemption that hasn't been reflected in the statement of assets yet.

The difference has been present since my last post almost a month ago, and hasn’t been covered since then. So I think it’s not a delay in “recording” an outflow (that should anyway be accounted in the shares before the real transaction in the wallet.

I doubt it s a fraud as the external auditors anyway certified the “correct” amount.

I do agree it’s a weird practise to publicly disclose an address as “reserve”, only to keep it misaligned with official numbers.

Hopefully they are going to disclose the full list of addresses: it’s detrimental to their own image to show such a low level of transparency after having sold that as a feature of the fund.