Switzerland-based 21shares has spent the past several years building what is arguably the most comprehensive digital asset ETP suite in Europe, and this latest pair of listings tells you something important about where the institutional crypto conversation is heading next. The firm is no longer content packaging Bitcoin and Ethereum for pension funds and family offices. It is now reaching deeper into the decentralized finance stack, offering European brokerage clients exposure to protocols that most retail investors would never touch on their own.
Lighter operates in the decentralised perpetual futures space, a segment that has grown rapidly in volume but carries significant smart contract and liquidity risks that would make any conventional asset manager flinch. Venice Token sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence infrastructure and privacy, a thematic play that reflects how AI narrative has bled into token markets over the past two years. What makes both products notable is not their underlying technology but their wrapper. Physically backed ETPs mean an investor buying LIHT or VENC through a standard European brokerage account is taking on counterparty and regulatory risk that has been vetted under European financial market rules, not the Wild West conditions of an offshore exchange.
For Filipino business owners and investors, the relevance is indirect but real. The Philippines consistently ranks among the highest countries in the world for crypto adoption per capita, driven by remittance corridors, gig economy workers, and a young population comfortable with digital wallets. Yet local access remains constrained. The Securities and Exchange Commission has registered a handful of digital asset exchanges under strict capital and reporting requirements, while the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas continues to warn banks against facilitating crypto transactions. There is no mechanism for a Filipino retail investor to buy a regulated, exchange-listed product tracking a DeFi protocol the way a German or Swiss investor can now buy LIHT.
That gap will not last forever. When major European asset managers build products around a protocol, it creates a regulatory precedent that emerging market regulators often reference when weighing their own frameworks. Watch for whether Philippine SEC rulemaking on digital asset securities evolves in response to this broader institutional legitimization. The question for Filipino market participants is whether local regulators will allow similar products to be listed domestically, or whether capital will continue flowing outward to access these instruments through foreign brokers, carrying with it the same capital flight dynamics the BSP has long tried to manage.