(Bloomberg) — Retail investors in Canada were quick to put money into cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds after regulators allowed a proliferation of products that track Bitcoin, Ether and other digital assets. They’ve lost most of it in a year.
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Canadian-traded crypto ETFs had just C$1.64 billion ($1.22 billion) in assets under management as of Nov. 18, according to calculations from National Bank of Canada analyst Daniel Straus. That’s down more than three-quarters from the C$7.3 billion value in those funds on Nov. 30 last year.
The collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, on the heels of other bankruptcies in the sector, has dealt a debilitating blow to confidence in digital assets. Other large crypto firms have been shaken as contagion spreads: Genesis Global, a US cryptocurrency broker, is seeking emergency funding to stay afloat, while BlockFi Inc. is also said to be in dire financial straits.
Wall Street Beat: Why the Genesis Contagion Matters After FTX
“The effect of FTX has likely led to a lengthening of what would be considered a crypto winter, a period of people’s lack of focus on the space or lack of trust in the space,” Som Seif, chief executive officer of Purpose Investments Inc., said in an interview.
In a measure of how swiftly the market has changed for risk assets, a single money-market ETF managed by CI Financial Corp. now has more in assets than all the crypto ETFs listed in Canada combined. The CI fund applies the simplest…
