A Swiss fintech firm has launched the first inverse Bitcoin tracker to give investors exposure to both directions.

Introducing the Amun AG SBTC

Swiss fintech firm Amun AG is launching the 21Shares Short Bitcoin ETP (SBTC) on the Swiss Stock Exchange (SIX).

It will give investors exposure to both bullish and bearish market movements of Bitcoin for the first time. Encouraging institutional investors to short the cryptocurrency may not be very positive for prices but a similar thing happened when CME and CBOE launched their products.

According to reports the SBTC tracker is the first short product of its kind using Bitcoin as the underlying asset for an Exchange Traded Product (ETP) structure.

The inverse ETP is reset at the end of each day and the performance is not rolled over to the next day making it ideal for short term price movements.

Amun already offers a number of existing unleveraged crypto ETPs with a suite with eleven trackers.

The full suite of 11 ETPs is listed in USD with two in Swiss Francs and 3 in Euros on the Swiss Stock Exchange.

Following the approval by the Financial Supervisory Authority, the products could be listed on other European exchanges.

More ways to short

An Australian crypto project launched last year already offers ‘inverse’ Bitcoin and Ethereum tokens.

As reported by Micky the Synthetix Exchange launched the iBTC and iETH tokens which inversely track real performance. In other words, if Bitcoin climbs, iBTC will fall.

At the time, founder Kain Warwick said “If you want to short Tether you can – just as a random example – if Tether does collapse. Things like that aren’t possible anywhere else.”

The moniker ‘synthetic’ is derived from the premise that traders don’t actually own any of the assets, just a synthetic exposure to them.

By November the Synthetix Network Token (SNX) was performing well, powering up the market cap charts.

At the time of writing SNX was ranked at 38th spot with a market cap of $160 million, roughly similar to Bitcoin Gold.

Davos update

Back in Switzerland, the World Economic Forum in Davos has attracted leading figures in the crypto industry such as Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse.

A public speaking panel dedicated to ‘Creating a Credible and Trusted Digital Currency’ will be delving into central bank digital currencies and their global impact.

Former US Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo also discussed his push to digitize the greenback.