The surging growth of NFTs and DeFi is putting pressure on the Ethereum blockchain, raising fees; Polygon offers a solution.

Bitwise Asset Management, the world’s largest crypto index fund manager with over $1.5 billion in AUM, today announced the launch of the Bitwise Polygon (MATIC) Fund. The strategy seeks to give investors exposure to MATIC, the native cryptoasset of the fast-growing Polygon platform, through a professionally managed investment vehicle.

“For years, the excitement around crypto’s most promising use cases, including DeFi and NFTs, has been muted by the fact that Ethereum simply isn’t built to handle it all yet,” said Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise. “Many are working on Ethereum competitors to solve this, but Polygon has seen breakthrough traction with a uniquely complementary solution that boosts Ethereum’s speed and efficiency. Investors have been asking about this rising star. With the new Bitwise Polygon Fund launching today, we’re excited to continue helping investors gain access to the expanding set of opportunities emerging in crypto.”

The Polygon platform allows developers to build applications and new blockchains that integrate with Ethereum, benefiting from its network effects while avoiding its transaction bottlenecks and higher costs. For example, an NFT transfer that would cost about $20 to execute on Ethereum costs just over $0.01 on Polygon. So far, more than 1,000 applications have chosen to build on Polygon, including market-leading NFT and DeFi apps OpenSea and Aave. In early October, the number of daily active user addresses for Polygon even briefly overtook that of Ethereum. As of October 13, Polygon had a market cap of around $8 billion, compared to Ethereum’s roughly $400 billion.

Sandeep Nailwal, the co-founder of Polygon, said: “We’re thrilled that a broader range of accredited and institutional investors will now be able to gain exposure to the MATIC token and help encourage greater development of the Polygon ecosystem. Polygon has become one of the most vital building blocks of Web3. Inclusion within Bitwise’s suite of funds serves as a great indicator of our work and progress so far.”

The new Bitwise Polygon Fund is currently available to accredited investors for private placement subscriptions with a $10,000 minimum investment and weekly redemptions. The manager intends to pursue public quotation of the fund with a ticker through OTCQX when and if it is eligible. The custodian of the Bitwise Polygon Fund is Coinbase Custody Trust Company, LLC, the world’s largest crypto custodian.

The launch of the Polygon fund follows several other launches by Bitwise earlier this year, including the Bitwise Uniswap (UNI) Fund, the Bitwise Aave (AAVE) Fund, the Bitwise 10 ex Bitcoin Crypto Index Fund, the Bitwise Crypto Industry Innovators ETF (BITQ), and the Bitwise DeFi Crypto Index Fund.

Bitwise today serves hundreds of RIAs, financial advisors, multifamily offices, hedge funds, high-net-worth individuals, and other institutional investors with a nationwide business development team.

About Bitwise Asset Management:

Based in San Francisco, Bitwise is one of the largest and fastest-growing cryptoasset managers. As of October 12, 2021, Bitwise managed more than $1.4 billion across an expanding suite of investment solutions. The firm is known for managing the world’s largest crypto index fund (OTCQX: BITW) and pioneering products spanning bitcoin, ethereum, DeFi, and crypto-focused equity indexes. Bitwise focuses on partnering with financial advisors and investment professionals to provide quality education and research. The team at Bitwise combines expertise in technology with decades of experience in traditional asset management and indexing, coming from firms including BlackRock, Blackstone, Facebook and Google, as well as the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Bitwise is backed by leading institutional investors and asset management executives, and has been profiled in Institutional Investor, CNBC, Barron’s, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal.

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