Since the early days of Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency space there has been an intention to try and court institutional investors into this nascent investment space. Bitcoin is objectively the best performing asset of the last decade; it offers exciting opportunity and refreshing potential for investors and breaks with the legacy norms of investing — but not every investor has taken advantage.

Some of Bitcoin’s attributes are seen as advantages, while others have been keeping the professional investors on the outside with just the smallest pang of FOMO. Familiarity in the investment process has been missing for some time now in the digital asset space — but that is being addressed — as well as regulatory compliance.

Huobi Asset Management in Hong Kong is looking to really tackle compliance head on with its latest digital asset products. The new offerings include three virtual asset funds and a private equity fund for blockchain mining.

What Huobi is achieving with these funds is groundbreaking, especially in Asia as it offers professional investors the opportunity to build virtual asset ownership in a secure, reliable and convenient manner via traditional fund products, without fear of reproach from regulators.

A New Audience

Bitcoin continues to be one of the most exciting, but under invested in, assets available to all investors. This height of interest but relative lack of buy in from large-scale investors and institutions has been perplexing.

However, we have seen companies offering Bitcoin services crop up and take aim at a more mainstream audience, and even more recently, an institutional investor subset by offering familiar tools and higher levels of regulatory compliance.

Huobi Asset Management’s four new funds (two passive virtual asset tracker funds, one active virtual asset fund and a private equity fund) are safe and secure gateways for professional investors to enter the crypto space. These funds are already igniting more investors’ enthusiasm to boost the fund scale. Huobi Asset Management first aimed at raising $100 million by Q3 2021, but this target has been hit by May, four months ahead of schedule.

The BTC and ETH tracker funds are passive funds designed to mirror the performance of the corresponding virtual asset. The multi-strategy fund is an actively managed fund that is invested in a basket of diversified virtual assets, offering investors the potential for greater returns compared to passive allocation.

Both the ETH tracking fund and the multi-strategy fund are the first in this category of virtual asset investment products to be issued by a licensed fund manager in Hong Kong.

Additionally, Huobi Asset Management is trying to broaden the horizons of this new audience beyond simply BTC, ETH and a few other coins. Huobi Asset Management are also offering a private equity fund that will make investments in virtual asset mining-related businesses, a market segment that has seen exponential growth over the past few years.

As institutional investors, retail investors, and enterprises alike continue to adopt virtual assets, Huobi Asset Management will leverage its expertise within the virtual asset mining ecosystem, to participate in virtual asset mining on behalf of its investors.

The private equity fund caters to investors seeking relatively stable returns through the operational management of private investments within the mining space.

Having sought out and received these licenses, Huobi Asset Management has ensured peace of mind for their clients who are not only being offered a service that feels familiar, but also one that is free of any fear from regulatory scrutiny.

Going Mainstream

Huobi Asset Management’s funds, Grayscale’s offering, and even other instances like the recent Coinbase IPO and MicroStrategy’s vast investment in Bitcoin all highlight a shift in the perception of digital assets.

The path has been cleared for institutional investors to enter the cryptocurrency market in a big way thanks to the hard work that providers are doing to seek licenses and ensure complete regulatory clarity.

The fact that professional investor can invest in the Huobi Asset Management virtual asset funds as simply as regular funds, or invest directly into cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, or even emulate MicroStrategy and buy up bulk Bitcoin shows that there has been a change.

Cryptocurrency was always created to be a financial asset for the people, but the categorization of people has just expanded to the benefit of the space. Institutional investors flooding in, thanks to service providers like Huobi Asset Management ensuring their due diligence with compliance only opens the door further for more individuals to rush into the burgeoning space.