Tezos ‘Exchange-Traded Cryptocurrency’ Launches on German Exchange

Digital asset manager ETC Group has launched an institutional-grade tezos exchange-traded exchange-traded product (ETP) on Europe’s Deutsche Börse XETRA under the ticker symbol EXTZ.

ETPs include investment vehicles representing commodities such as physical gold, lumber or oil, or cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin or Ethereum’s ether, and they can be traded on stock exchanges.

The launch of EXTZ brings XTZ, the native token of the Tezos blockchain, to investors across 16 European Union countries as institutional appetite for accessible altcoin products rapidly grows.

“We’re responding to demand from institutional investors who’re looking to invest in Bitcoin and Ethereum challengers by adding the Tezos-based ETC [exchange-traded cryptocurrency] to our portfolio,” said ETC Group co-CEO Bradley Duke in a statement.

The launch is part of a broader offering by ETC Group, which says it has plans to list five new cryptocurrency products this month. The ETCs would offer investors exposure to a handful of fast-growing layer 1 blockchains, including Tezos, Polkadot, Solana, Stellar and Cardano.

Exchange-traded cryptocurrency funds are popular with institutional investors because they can be easily purchased via an exchange, have passed regulatory scrutiny and – similar to gold exchange-traded commodities – are backed by a predefined amount of the underlying commodity or cryptocurrency.

Increasingly, institutional investors are paying attention to high-flying cryptocurrencies beyond bitcoin and Ethereum’s ether, spurring a flurry of exchange-traded product launches catering to the new influx of capital.

This year, lesser-known altcoins such as Tezos’s XTZ (+116% YTD) and Cardano’s ADA (+650% YTD) have widely outperformed bitcoin (+67% YTD), the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

“This institutional-grade product is a sign of confidence from the financial industry in Tezos,” Thibaut Chessé, an adoption manager with Nomadic Labs, a Tezos-focused research group, said in a statement.

Earlier this April, competing digital asset manager 21Shares launched exchange-traded products dedicated to Stellar’s XLM and Cardano’s ADA token. In November, the firm followed with its first polygon ETP.

The first tezos-backed ETP was launched in November 2019 on the Swiss SIX Exchange by digital asset manager 21Shares AG.

CORRECTION (Dec. 13, 22:14 UTC): Corrects name of digital asset manager at end of article to 21Shares AG from Amun AG.