IDEG Asset Management Launches Actively Managed ETH Fund In Collaboration With Coinbase Prime

IDEG Asset Management (IDEG), based in the British Virgin Islands, revealed its Ethereum Enhanced Portfolio, a proactively managed fund that tracks the price of Ether at the same time utilizing a futures arbitrage strategy for improving returns and reducing volatility.

The fund will be included in the latest TIMES suite of products, abbreviated for Trust, Interest, Mining, Yield Earnings and Structured Solutions.

Emma Hu, IDEG’s product partner, said in a statement that the Ethereum Enhanced Portfolio is the first of its kind portfolio that offers qualifying investors a chance to capitalize on Ethereum, the leading smart-contract platform, while also improving risk-adjusted returns in comparison to holding Ethereum.

The firm didn’t yet reveal the size of the funds or the investment it has made till now.

Coinbase Prime will act as the prime broker and custodian of the fund, strengthening the bond started in 2019. Suen Son Poon, the Chief Compliance Officer and COO at IDEG, revealed that they chose Coinbase as their preferred prime broker and custodian because of the need for a partner which is focused on compliance and is reputable for fulfilling their trading needs and protecting their assets and naturally the investments of their clients.

The Ethereum fund is released as a digital asset vehicle ex-Bitcoin that for quite some time has been attracting traction among institutional investors due to more diversification in the volatile digital sector. Goldman Sachs has started providing access to an ether fund provided by Galaxy Digital.

As per a CoinShares report, with $131.8 million of redemptions, Bitcoin-related products made up the major share of fund outflows; on the other hand, the funds concentrated on Ether(ETH) witnessed only $15.3 million in outflows.

Ian Stirling, the company’s spokesperson, said that except for the United States, qualifying investors around the world would have access to the Ethereum Enhanced Portfolio fund with a minimum investment amount of $100,000. Pointing out the fact that the fund will need a fixed management fee on the basis of the asset under management, he adds that more often than not, the majority of single-coin tracker funds on the market are mostly passive funds.

IDEG’s future plans include releasing additional thematic funds in 2022, along with actively managed multi-coin, GameFi/Metaverse play-to-earn (P2E) strategies and decentralized finance (DeFi) yield farming.