Zurich, March 18th, 2024 - The Switzerland-based protocol Liqwid Finance, in partnership with the issuer Issuance.Swiss AG, is launching CASL, an innovative ETP in the world of staking digital assets. CASL not only captures the performance of the underlying ADA, managed by the Cardano Foundation, but also the interest earned by staking the token. Distributed as an ETP (Exchange Traded Product), the product is accessible to all kind of investors from Thursday last on the Zurich stock exchange, the SIX Swiss Exchange (ISIN code CH1327686056 - Ticker CASL).
For Florian Volery, co-founder of Liqwid Finance, "CASL offers all the advantages of traditional and decentralized finance. It's a low-cost, liquid, institutional-quality product". He has designed this ETP which, not only follows the developments of the ADA token, a crypto asset launched in 2017 by Cardano, but reaps the returns of staking this token on Cardano's blockchain, the most decentralized to date. "With CASL, we want to take a new step," emphasizes Florian Volery, "one that will bridge the gap between traditional and digital asset management. Until now, most of the financial instruments available to investors in the crypto universe gave them access to developments in the underlying assets (Bitcoin, Ethereum, ADA, etc.). We're going one step further, by putting ADA's outstanding assets to work and redistributing the interest to investors." Investors benefit from a double return on their investment, as well as lower management fees (1.5%) than the average of competing products.
Swiss engineering, 100% secure
In addition to its above-industry-average return prospects, the CASL ETP has a particularly controlled risk profile. It is 100% backed by physical crypto asset: ADA tokens, that are real assets, held in a "cold" (offline) wallet. The staking of the ETP's ADA tokens is carried out by Liqwid on the Cardano network, the only one not to have suffered an outage over the last five years, compared with its biggest competitors who also have a proof-of-stake consensus (Solana, Ethereum, Avalanche).
"CASL makes it simple for investors, without the need for a crypto-currency portfolio or specific knowledge, to earn money while contributing to the decentralization of finance," summarizes Bruce Jackson, Head of Digital Assets at Apex Group. This decentralisation is the key to the future of an inclusive world, in which millions of people who don't have access to banking infrastructures can participate."
The CASL ETP offers instant liquidity without any constraints, as Cardano's blockchain does not foresee any lock-in period for the assets at stake. The entire value chain involves Swiss players, a further guarantee of security.
The launch price was set at USD$25 and is available in 2 additional currencies (CHF and €) which represents an real exposure of 39 ADA (price of 1 ADA for ~USD$0.64 | 12.03.2024).
To find out more: please use the issuer's website https://issuance.swiss/products/
Press Contact: press@liqwid.ch or +41 79 269 53 31
About Liqwid Finance
Liqwid is a liquidity protocol for lending and borrowing Cardano native assets. The Liqwid protocol is composed of decentralized, audited smart contracts built on the Cardano blockchain.
Smart contracts enable users to deposit liquidity into a money market, earn interest and open over-collateralized loans directly, without intermediaries and in a secure manner.
The platform was launched in February 2023 and currently holds over $70 million in assets on its protocol. Liqwid's mission is to build bridges between decentralized and traditional finance, with the aim of financing the real economy through blockchain technology.
About Cardano Foundation
The Cardano Foundation is an independent non-profit organization based in Switzerland, responsible for promoting the Cardano blockchain as public infrastructure across a wide range of industries. Based in Zug, Switzerland, the foundation oversees the developments of Cardano, which is an open source blockchain built through peer-reviewed research and a platform for executing smart contracts. The cryptocurrency used on Cardano is called Ada. Launched by Charles Hoskinson, the co-founder of the Ethereum token, Cardano is the first blockchain platform to be secure enough to protect billions of data, scalable enough to adapt to global systems and robust enough to support fundamental changes.
About Issuance.Swiss AG
Issuance.Swiss AG is a dedicated SPV, fully customised plug and play ready to admit financial products on regulated European stock markets and brings vanilla and complex digital assets strategies to the regulated markets wrapped and in the form of a publicly listed ETP. Incorporated in Zug Switzerland and through its standalone set up, the SPV is able to list client strategies from European and US clients who currently have compliance constraints in managing digital assets. In return the client can enjoy a whitelabel revenue solution (net of administrative costs) as the product is fully scalable and open ended through a creation redemption proposition and its time to market is estimated for admissions to the stock exchanges to be within 8 weeks from engagement. The SPV is fully equipped and onboarded with key service providers while the SPV takes control of all the operational burden.
