Teucrium Investment Advisors’ 2x Long Daily XRP exchange-traded fund (XXRP), the first leveraged XRP product in the U.S., racked up $5 million in trading volume on its Tuesday debut, becoming one of the company’s «most successful» introductions and posting a top 5% performance for a new ETF.

The ETF is designed to deliver twice the daily returns of XRP through swap agreements. With no suitable US-listed spot XRP ETFs available, the swaps’ reference rates incorporate several European exchange-traded products.

The change in U.S. government and its more pro-crypto stance helped bring the ETF to market. The filing for the ETF took place right after the prior Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) administration exited, and as soon as the standard 75-day review period passed, Teucrium seized the earliest launch window.

“We filed as soon as we could after the old SEC regime left … we launched today,” CEO Sal Gilbertie said on Tuesday. “I think it’s almost at a couple hundred thousand shares.”

The fund saw about four times the initial activity of Volatility Shares’ 2x Solana ETF (SOLT), propelling it into the top 5%, according to Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas.

“It’s been a terrific, very successful launch — our most successful launch day to date for any fund we’ve ever done,” Gilbertie said. “There was overwhelming excitement… I think a lot because we were overlooked.”

The ETF gains XRP exposure through swaps tied to European XRP ETPs but can also use other XRP-linked instruments, like futures, to enhance efficiency and cut costs. Gilbertie emphasized that the product isn’t for long-term investors.

“This is absolutely a short-term trading tool — ideally for one day,” he said. “Because of the reset and the math … if that asset goes up very slowly or sideways or down, you will lose money.”

Teucrium, managing roughly $320 million across 12 ETFs, is already planning an inverse XRP ETF, the Teucrium 2x Short Daily XRP ETF, a prospectus shows. This would let investors profit from XRP price drops, though Gilbertie said the firm will wait to assess demand before proceeding.

CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.

The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 2164.45, down 0.9% (-20.67) since 4 p.m. ET on Tuesday.

Six of the 20 assets are trading higher.

Leaders: LTC (+1.7%) and LINK (+1.7%).

Laggards: SUI (-3.8%) and XLM (-2.7%).

The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.

This Bitcoin-focused hedge fund outperformed bitcoin last year.

210k Capital, the hedge fund for UTXO Management, was the fifth best performing single major hedge fund in 2024 according to HFR. It returned 164% net of fees in 2024. UTXO Management is the investing arm of BTC Inc., of Bitcoin Magazine and Bitcoin Conference fame.

This article first appeared on Blockspace Media, the leading Bitcoin industry publication dedicated to covering Bitcoin tech, markets, mining, and ordinals. Get Blockspace articles directly in your inbox by clicking here.

Single manager hedge funds are run by one entity, versus multi-manager or fund-to-fund hedge funds, which have multiple portfolio managers.

In HFR’s recap of its 2024 Global Hedge Fund Industry Report Q4 2024, the research firm revealed that cryptocurrency-focused hedge funds were “the leading area of overall [hedge fund] industry performance.” HFR’s index for cryptocurrency funds returned 59.81% in 2024.

UTXO Management’s banner 2024 performance puts it in conversation with leading hedge funds that focus on traditional assets and industries. And it has bitcoin to thank for that – or, more directly, bitcoin companies.

UTXO Management’s Co-founder and Chief Investment Officer, Tyler Evans, said that the fund’s 2024 returns chiefly stemmed from its investment in bitcoin strategy companies, principally Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) and Metaplanet.

“Over the last 12 months, we went very hard into the bitcoin treasury-play thesis as as we really saw it play out with what Saylor is doing, and the opportunity to really globalize it…So we did that pretty heavily in 2024, with both Strategy as well as Metaplanet out of Japan, where we were the first bitcoin investors in the company,” Evans told Blockspace.

He said that the hedge fund holds 80% of its portfolio in bitcoin equities, which were a “big factor that drove [210k Capital’s] out-performance in 2024. A portion of that 80% includes public bitcoin miners, but the real money makers have been Metaplanet and Strategy, the latter of which 210k Capital held since the early days of its bitcoin strategy.

These companies, Evans explained, offer a novel form of securitized bitcoin exposure that makes it easier for everything from institutional firms to IRAs to pension funds to hold bitcoin-adjacent assets. As a result, “the investable landscape has grown significantly over the last few years,” he said, opening the door to “registered investment advisors, wealth managers, funds, and sophisticated family offices.”

This marks a shift from the fund’s early days when it courted self-made, high-net worth individuals who were typically more active investors managing their own portfolio to more passive investors whom manage pools of capital.

“We saw the demand for institutional capital to get exposure to Bitcoin and the role that these Treasury companies can serve is securitizing bitcoins for fixed income investors, the insurance funds, or the mutual funds,” said Evans.

“These institutional allocators have very defined mandates of what types of instruments that they can invest in. And that’s really the beauty of the whole playbook is securitizing bitcoin in these different formats that make it so that institutional allocators can invest into it.”

Bitcoin ETFs, first approved in January 2024, offer liquidity as well. With BlackRock on board – not to mention it recommending a 5% allocation to bitcoin – Evans said the Overton Window for how investors view bitcoin is shifting. So much so that the Wisconsin Teacher’s pension now holds bitcoin ETFs, as does the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund.

Next: taking bitcoin treasury companies global

The only thing harder than winning the championship is defending your title. And with bitcoin down year-to-date, it raises the question: can 210k Capital top 2024?

Evans said that the fund hedges its positions with a number of auctions, but it’s also still “very bullish” on bitcoin in 2025. It’s even more bullish on exporting Michael Saylor’s corporate bitcoin treasury Strategy strategy to other financial markets.

“We think that there’s an opportunity for a bitcoin treasury company in every tier-one financial market globally,” he said.

UTXO Management had a large hand in standing up Metaplanet’s bitcoin treasury in Japan. Tyler Evans served as an independent director and UTXO Management partner Dylan Leclair acting as Metaplanet’s head of bitcoin strategy. Another UTXO portfolio company, The Smarter Web Company, is set to IPO on the Aquis Exchange in the U.K. this week.

Read: England’s Metaplanet? The Smarter Web Company eyes UK IPO with bitcoin strategy

Public bitcoin treasury companies like Metaplanet give traditional investors access to bitcoin where other vehicles are limited. In Japan, for example, there are no native bitcoin ETFs, and access to American ones is limited. This – plus Japan’s low interest rates and a lower capital gains tax on equities cryptocurrencies – make it ripe for Metaplanet to reap market share, Evans believes.

UTXO has its eye on multiple markets to incubate bitcoin treasury companies, including Latin America, Central America, the Middle East, Australia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Some of these are already in the works “at various stages of maturity,” Evans teased, with some in the IPO planning stage and others raising capital.

“Our inbound deal flow of seasoned entrepreneurs who want to bring it to their own local market is growing massively,” he said.