Welcome to Swarm Markets’ media memo. This weekly update provides comments from Swarm Markets’ co-founder, Timo Lehes, on key industry news that has caught our eye, plus our own developments.
Comments available on the following news items:
- Swarm monthly securities data
- New EU AML limits for digital assets
- TradFi Digital assets markets expanding
Swarm monthly securities data – March 2023
Trading activity data for the first month since launching tokenized public stocks and bond ETFs on February 24th, shows an 11% rise in platform users and three product sell outs. All growth was organic with the company not spending any budget on marketing in the past month.
Throughout the first month, Swarm sold out of products on three separate occasions, with iShares US treasury bond 1-3 year ETF selling out on the first day of trading February 24th, Tesla stocks selling out on February 28th and Apple stocks selling out on March 13th.
Diving deeper into trading activity, the total value of securities traded throughout the first month was $79,433, with each product generating a good start to sales – $33,679 for iShares US treasury bond 1-3 year ETF, $17,221 for iShares US treasury bond 0-1 year ETF, $15,766 for Tesla and $12,767 for Apple.
Swarm is partnering with institutional market makers to support the next level of volume for tokenized stock and bonds, allowing us to grow beyond early adopter volumes.
Timo Lehes, Co-Founder of Swarm, said: “We knew that there was significant demand for stocks and bond ETFs from our community and beyond, but the response we’ve seen over the last month has exceeded our expectations.
“We have received a significant volume of inbound requests from institutions needing to use tokenized securities to solve collateral and treasury problems. Others have enquired about tokenizing other asset classes, all of which is testament to the need for solutions like this.”
TradFi digital assets market expanding
Conversations are still at the stage of whether digital versions of real world assets (RWAs) are a viable development in traditional financial (TradFi) ecosystems and whether expansion is possible. But the evidence is there that TradFi institutions are already busy adopting DeFi solutions and a real market is expanding.
Take the latest announcements – one from Credit Agricole CIB, and another from UBS. Two major European financial institutions launching blockchain digital asset initiatives and creating new pathways using DeFi technology. And this isn’t emerging in basic functions of financial markets. The UBS news pertains to complex cross-border repo trades while Credit Agricole has launched a decentralized capital markets platform.
In many ways we’re still scratching at the surface of DeFi blockchain’s technological potential in finance. The litmus test ultimately will be in the creation of deep, liquid capital and RWA-backed markets for digital assets. While the market might seem small at the moment, and difficult to quantify, we’ll arrive at a tipping point in the near future where it goes from being the exception to being the rule.
