Liqwid Finance Launches Cardano ETP - Is A US Variant In The Works?

CASL to the World

Blockchain-native ETP investment vehicles are slowly becoming a norm and Liqwid Finance has joined the trend. The Cardano variant of Aave on Ethereum has recently rolled out an ETP product focused on the peer-reviewed research blockchain network. 

Sharing the new development on X, Liqwid Finance revealed that the ETP is codenamed CASL and is accessible for trading on the SIX Swiss Exchange. 

https://x.com/liqwidfinance/status/1768300822901797036

The new Cardano ETP service was launched alongside the famous ETP maker Issuance.Swiss AG. Besides being traded on the Swiss Exchange, the Cardano ETP is also accessible to the general public on the regulated segment of the Deutsche Börse XETRA under the ticker symbol ‘CSLE.’

Shedding light on what the CASL ETP products aim to achieve, the Liqwid Finance team stated that the overarching objective is to revolutionize digital asset ETP services. While other digital assets ETPs like Bitcoin and Ethereum only track the price performance of the underlying asset, the CASL investment vehicle will also allow investors to earn staking rewards from subscribing to the service. 

Given this, users get to earn from tracking the price action of the Cardano’s ADA token and also from staking. This provides a dual investment opportunity in an easily accessible and secure manner.

The CASL ETP is backed 100% by physical stocks of the ADA token and the digital asset is stored in a cold wallet. There is also no lock-in period which means users can access their liquidity or investment anytime they want without difficulty. It also comes with a low 1.5% management fee.

Liqwid Finance is one of the most robust lending and borrowing platforms for Cardano native assets. The DeFi protocol which holds more than $32 million in TVL also operates a staking platform for governance purposes as well as a 10,000 NFT collection called Aquafarmers. 

Bitcoin, Ethereum, Now Cardano?

The past six months have been filled with watershed moments in the crypto ecosystem. At the beginning of 2024, the spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) was officially approved by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) after several years of stalling. On its part, the foremost smart contract protocol Ethereum also received the green light to be publicly tradable on legacy financial exchanges. While it has taken the US a long time to come around, ETP variants of both Bitcoin and Ethereum investment vehicles have been accessible to European investors for some time.

Liqwid Finance’s CASL investment vehicle plays the dual role of putting the Cardano native lending and borrowing protocol on the global map as well as positioning the peer-reviewed blockchain in the public eye. While Cardano has not enjoyed the same amount of media attention as its blockchain counterparts, the proof-of-stake consensus network has built up a strong brand presence in the fast-moving blockchain ecosystem.

This industry strength is seen in the fact that it is the blockchain partner of the Refugees Agency of the United Nations (UNHCR). It helps the UNHCR raise funds for people displaced by war and other natural disasters. Cardano also retains the record of being 100% online since launching without suffering any network downtime. This is not the case for its other counterparts like Solana and Avalanche who have battled with multiple network interruptions.

With its science-based blockchain architecture, Cardano is also being tapped by a growing number of legacy-facing companies seeking a blockchain partner to usher them into the new decentralized world. All these positives point to the fact that a Cardano spot ETF might not be far off as the world looks toward a reliable DeFi protocol to work with.