Caspian, a ‘crypto fund manager’ platform, has concluded the public round of its token sale ahead of schedule, wrapping up a combined private-public sale of $19.5 million.
Some huge names in the still-young cryptoasset industry have attached their names to the project, including Ari Paul and Mike Novogratz, as well as exchanges Coinbase, BitMEX and Gemini. The platform has already gone live after an extensive beta testing period, and 170 entities around the world are standing by to be granted access to the platform, according to a PR release.
Caspian aims to be a ‘full-stack’ fund manager platform inspired by the tools of traditional finance, but designed specifically for cryptoasset trading. It represents the demands and needs of the growing wave of interest of traditional finance in the cryptoasset industry. The platform is “a complete asset management solution that covers the lifecycle of the trade”, according to its website. It aims to solve the problem of a highly fragmented exchange ecosystem in the inchoate cryptoasset industry.
The platform’s proprietary CSP token, issued as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain, offers an array of discounts and bounty opportunities, as well as the right to “guide” the platform for the top fifteen holders.
Chris Jenkins, managing director of sales and operations, described the repurposing of traditional financial tools and know-how into a cryptoasset context, saying “we had the whole stack in equity-derivatives, and we’ve moved it into crypto, and now we’re offering that […] it’s one-stop shop”. The “whole suite” of tools consists of trading, portfolio management, compliance, risk, and reporting modules, he said.
In an interview with CryptoGlobe earlier this month, Caspian chief technology officer Gerrit van Wingerden elaborated on the origins of the Caspian platform as being in 00’s Japanese markets, where large orders had to be spread across an array of disparate exchanges – not unlike the situation today with cryptoassets. The solution in both cases was/is the sort of “unified system” that Caspian purports to now offer.
‘The floodgates have opened’
The success of the token sale – modest by crypto-industry standards – comes amid claims that investors are losing their appetite for initial coin offerings (ICOs). The London-based Financial Times claimed the ICO boom is now a bust, crying “God help us all” in a recent article.
It would seem, however, that such concerns have not stopped the institutional entrance into cryptoassets. It has been well documented on CryptoGlobe that institutional interest has not waned, even if retail interest has. With the imminent launch of the Bakkt bitcoin future product, a “revolution” in institutional interest could be at hand.
