Arca Labs launches a SEC registered Ethereum-based fund

An exchange-traded bitcoin fund may never receive approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), yet an even stranger crypto investment vehicle has finally made it: a blockchain-transferred fund.

The first approval granted to a crypto fund

Los Angeles-based money manager Arca began selling shares in the "Arca US Treasury Fund", a closed-end fund registered by the SEC whose digital stocks - ArCoins - are traded on the Ethereum blockchain.

The fund invests most of its assets in US Treasury bills and short-term assets. The company said it received SEC notification on July 6. The launch marks the first time that the SEC, a notoriously crypto-skeptical institution, allows a fund represented by crypto token to enter investment markets under the 1940 Investment Company Act.

Arca has been pushing for approval of the ArCoin proposal in various forms for nearly 20 months, as shown in regulatory documents. "Our announcement today is a revolutionary and transformative step towards the unification of traditional finance with investments in digital assets, as this new category of regulated digital investment products is made available to investors," said Arca Rayne CEO Steinberg in a press release. Executives had previously announced their proposal for the fund as a step forward for a class of hybrid digital assets.

The blockchain as a guarantee of efficiency and security

ArCoin connects perhaps the least risky asset of the investment world, Treasurys, with the blockchain, the building block of emerging technology that they believe will offer efficiency and security to the negotiation and regulation process. In particular, Arca's digital development wing, Arca Labs, has chosen the Ethereum blockchain, one of the largest public blockchains in the world and the arrival site of many new crypto assets, including so-called digital titles such as ArCoin, which uses the ERC-1404 protocol, according to the prospectus of 24 June.

ERC-1404 is a more restrictive derivative of the popular ERC-20 interoperability protocol. The main difference is that ERC-1404 limits the cases in which holders can send a token to a collection of authorized addresses. This is a crucial point for regulators who are wary of leaving tokens outside their range.

Traditional Italian finance also works on the integration of new technologies

With the Spunta Banca DLT project, the Italian Banking Association (ABI) has actually brought the blockchain into the Italian banking world, through an infrastructure for banks operating in Italy that in the future will also be able to host other applications.

The project sees the commitment of the technical partners NTT DATA and SIA, in addition to R3 with the Corda Enterprise platform. The Italian banking sector is a major player in the blockchain landscape and therefore in innovation.

Monte dei Paschi di Siena also appears among the leading banks, whose shares are listed on Piazza Affari (MPS). Currently the MPS shares have a price of 1,57 euros and marks a performance in the last month of + 5,17%.