A South African investment company has warned investors against the “silly” decision to switch their investments from traditional securities to ‘crypto,’ despite offering a BTC exchange-traded fund (ETF).
Sygnia Ltd. CEO Magda Wierzycka said that her firm has been actively dissuading investors from making a sudden pivot in their investment strategies to target digital assets, lured by this year’s bull rally.
Sygnia is a Johannesburg-based investment manager with R350 billion ($20 billion) in assets under management. In June, it launched the Life Bitcoin Plus Fund, which offers retail investors exposure to BTC via BlackRock’s (NASDAQ: BLK) iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT). In its first month, the fund reportedly hit 12% returns.
Still, Wierzycka believes that investors must not look to digital assets as their main investments.
“We actually intervene with a view of stopping the investor from doing something silly by switching,” she told Bloomberg, adding that ‘crypto’ should only make up a “very small portion of a diversified investment strategy.”
Wierzycka revealed that the company reaches out to any investor who makes the move to its BTC ETF to warn them of the risks of ‘crypto’ investing.
“The underlying asset is highly volatile. You need to be very sure about the messaging around it and you need to be sure that you don’t make promises that you can’t meet,” she stated.
Despite the company’s safeguards, Sygnia’s digital asset fund has been a massive success, the CEO said, noting that it had recorded “very, very significant inflows.”
While Sygnia warns investors against going all in on digital assets, another South African firm is pivoting from its traditional SME financing business model to focus on becoming a BTC treasury.
Altvest Capital Ltd. recently announced that it’s seeking to raise $210 million to invest in BTC. As part of this pivot, it’s set to change its name to Africa Bitcoin Corporation.
Altvest is listed on the Johannesburg bourse with a $3 million market cap. It claims to be the first public firm in South Africa to turn to BTC as its primary treasury reserve asset, taking after Michael Saylor’s Strategy (NASDAQ: MSTR) and Japan’s Metaplanet.
“Pension funds, retirement annuities, unit trusts and others usually cannot directly buy Bitcoin. But by buying our shares they will now be able to get exposure in a regulated way through equity,” CEO Warren Wheatley said.
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Source: https://coingeek.com/20b-south-african-fund-dont-invest-all-in-crypto/
