Grayscale Launches Fund holding Altcoins Including Solana, Cardano, Avalanche and Polygon but No Ethereum

Grayscale Investments launched its new “smart contract platform ex Ethereum fund”, which looks to offer exposure to smart contract cryptocurrencies not related to Ethereum. The fund will include popular altcoins such as Solana, Cardano and Avalanche at its inception.

The fund will adjust its exposure to the various cryptocrurencies via CoinDesk’s smart contract platform Select Ex ETH Index, according to statements by Grayscale. Although the holdings were said to be determined by the performance of the smart contract tokens at the time, it should be noted, Terra (LUNA) and (BNB) were missing from the holdings. Currently the holdings in the fund are:

Grayscale Smart Contract ex Ethereum Fund – Current Holding Breakdown

• Cardano (ADA) at 24%
• Solana (SOL) at 24%
• Avalanche (AVAX) at 17%
• Polkadot (DOT) at 16%
• Polygon (MATIC) at 9%
• Algorand (ALGO) at 4%
• Stellar (XLM) at 4%

The Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein speaking about the new fund stated “Investor demand for diversified exposure has grown in parallel to the ongoing evolution of the crypto ecosystem.” He later added “Smart contract technology is critical to the growth of the digital economy, but it’s still too early to know which platform will win,.” He then added “The beauty of [the fund] is that investors do not have to choose one winner, and instead can access the development of the smart contract platform ecosystem through a singular investment vehicle.”

Grayscale Investments has released other crypto funds in the past, including its Bitcoin Trust, which is the largest Bitcoin fund to date. It seeks to convert the fund to a United States based spot ETF, however it has not received approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) just yet.