Crypto Asset Firm Amun Launches Inverse Bitcoin ETP

Digital asset issuer Amun is launching a financial product for traders who predict bitcoin's price will drop.

Announced Thursday, Switzerland-based Amun has launched the 21Shares Short Bitcoin ETP (SBTC) on the Swiss Stock Exchange (SIX), an exchange-traded product tracking bitcoin’s price movements inversely.

If bitcoin’s price climbs, traders lose. If it falls, they win.

“If you’ve ever tried trading options or futures, you’ll see that it’s pretty difficult,” Amun CEO Hany Rashwan said in a phone interview. “It's not the easiest thing which is why it's just easier to say ‘I think bitcoin price will go down, I'm going to buy this stock.’”

Compared to entering short trade positions on bitcoin – wherein an investor expects the price to fall and bets against an asset’s value rising by buying and selling a position on loaned funds  – Amun’s Short Bitcoin ETP does not require loaned capital. 

Rather, the product captures bitcoin’s price movement inversely in one stock purchase akin to a synthetic exchange-traded note (ETN) comprised of short positions. Furthermore, all positions reset at the end of the trading day with performances not rolling over to the next day.

Rashwan noted the rise of crypto derivatives, particularly from lightly or completely unregulated exchanges, which are taking up to 99 percent of the bitcoin derivative market’s volume compared to legacy providers such as CME Group or ICE’s Bakkt. 

Indeed, crypto derivatives platform FTX traded some 2,405 options contracts traded on its inaugural day, Jan. 13, versus 54 options contracts on CME which opened the same day, according to financial publication Micky. Options on CME are constructed at 5 bitcoin per contract while FTX allows users to draft their own.

Responding to consumer demand, Rashwan said Amun has positioned itself to provide new forms of crypto exposure in just a few clicks. 

“We hope to bring the easiest and most regulated user experience to short or leverage crypto exposure and this is the first step towards that vision... You don’t have to figure out how to open and shut the contract. You don't need to deal with what a perpetual swap is. Nothing of that sort. You just buy a stock,” Rashwan added.

Amun, with some $50 million in assets under management, offers 10 crypto-based ETP products on the Swiss SIX and Boerse Stuttgart. The firm recently garnered approval from the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (SFSA) to extend its offering into other European retail markets.