CoinShares closes buy of US bitcoin ETF issuer’s fund division

CoinShares completed its takeover of Valkyrie’s fund business Tuesday as part of its bid to expand its asset management footprint in the US.

Specifically, the Europe-focused investment company bought the Tennessee-based crypto asset manager’s actively managed ETF business. Details of the deal were not disclosed.

CoinShares said it had secured an option to buy Valkyrie’s fund division in November. That option was active until March 31, 2024.

With the purchase, CoinShares is set to gain roughly $530 million of assets under management across four funds.

This includes one of the 10 US spot bitcoin ETFs — the Valkyrie Bitcoin Fund (BRRR) — as well as the firm’s Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI); its Bitcoin and Ether Strategy ETF (BTF); and the Valkyrie Bitcoin Futures Leveraged Strategy ETF (BTFX).

CoinShares aims to rebrand the four Valkyrie funds by the summer, the company said in a Tuesday news release.

CoinShares CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti said in a statement that the Valkyrie acquisition is a step toward moving deeper into the US after a decade of focusing on European markets.

“It broadens our product offerings, strengthens our innovation capacity and increases by a factor of 15 our total addressable market,” Mognetti added.

Valkyrie is perhaps best known for being one of the issuers to gain Securities and Exchange Commission approval in January to launch a spot bitcoin ETF.

Though among the smaller funds in the segment, BRRR has notched net inflows of $308 million since launching on Jan. 11, according to BitMEX Research. The fund had eclipsed $400 million in assets at market close on Monday, the data shows.

Valkyrie was second to the US market — behind ProShares — with an ETF that invested in bitcoin futures contracts, launching that offering in October 2021. That fund started to also give investors exposure to ether futures contracts last October.

More recently, the company launched its Bitcoin Futures Leveraged Strategy ETF last month.

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