Making sense of Trump Media’s ETF link-up with Crypto.com

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As I chatted with execs about the future of crypto ETFs at the Exchange conference in Las Vegas, it came out that Trump Media and Technology Group was linking up with Crypto.com to launch the same such funds.

Crypto.com initially wrote on its X account that there would be three ETFs in particular: one ETF holding bitcoin, one investing in both BTC and ETH, and another ETF holding BTC, ETH, solana, cronos (CRO), and XRP.

It appears the post was later modified to just mention “a first of its kind ETF basket of cryptocurrencies, including CRO and other crypto assets.”

A Trump Media release also talks of ETFs comprising “securities with a Made in America focus spanning diverse industries such as energy.” The funds would be made available via Crypto.com’s broker-dealer Foris Capital US.

So we don’t know exactly which products the companies could file for. I sought further clarity on this from the two companies and received none. 

We do know that Trump Media in February applied for trademarks for Truth.Fi-branded ETFs and SMAs with “Made in America,” “US Energy Independence” and “Bitcoin Plus” labels. The company noted that Yorkville Advisors would act as the registered investment advisor (RIA) for the vehicles.

Adding Crypto.com to this partnership (to offer custody and supply the crypto assets for the ETFs) is perhaps not super surprising, given Trump’s meeting with Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek in December. 

Still, The ETF Store president Nate Geraci gave this take on X:

“While there are certainly some questions that could be raised around conflicts of interest given the venture’s dependence on the regulatory backdrop, Trump is obviously putting his money where his mouth is on crypto,” Geraci told me.

I saw Bloomberg Intelligence’s James Seyffart at the Exchange ETF conference and asked him his initial thoughts.

“It’s interesting that Trump Media is making so much noise about these…but we still don’t have any actual filings,” he said. “I assume we’ll see them in the coming months.” 

Because I chatted with Hashdex CIO Samir Kerbage right after the announcement, I asked for his reaction. Simply put: “It’s not surprising that a lot of players are looking at the space,” he said.

Hashdex knows all about putting multiple crypto assets into one wrapper (as Trump Media and Crypto.com now seek to do). 

The Brazil-based asset manager has crypto index ETFs abroad, and it seeks to bring that type of exposure to the US via its Hashdex Nasdaq Crypto Index US ETF. That ETF launched last month, but so far only holds BTC and ETH. Hashdex is meeting with the SEC’s crypto task force on Friday, as the regulator weighs which other crypto assets it might allow into such a wrapper. 

Hashdex’s goal is to ultimately create “the Nasdaq 100 for crypto,” Kerbage told me. 

“It’s not worth it for [financial advisers] to try to identify each of the individual crypto assets and then [define] the weights they’re going to put in for a very small part of the portfolio,” Kerbage noted.

So while a number of ETF issuers continue filing for single-asset spot crypto ETFs, the Hashdex CIO said indexing is “the next frontier” in this space. 

The crypto indexing category will grow larger than individual asset products over the long term, Kerbage argued. He envisions a world where US crypto index ETFs could hold hundreds of assets with a combined market cap amounting to tens of trillions of dollars.

“Twenty years from now, we’re going to be using bitcoin probably way more than we use gold,” he said. “It’s going to be a huge asset, but it’s not going to be the crypto asset that created the most value to our society. That’s what we believe.”

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