CoinShares Expands Into Onchain Asset Management, Brings Multi-Asset Portfolios Onchain

You may have seen it in yesterday’s Institutional Briefing: S&P DJI has granted TradeXYZ an exclusive license to offer perpetual contracts for its popular S&P 500 on its trading platform. In other words, investors around the globe will now be able to go long and short the S&P 500 24/7.

This is a big deal. There’s clear offshore demand to trade assets around the clock with leverage, and now one of the largest financial products in the world is starting to plug into that system.

It’s also another big win for Hyperliquid, the blockchain that TradeXYZ is built on. If you’ve been following the news lately, you might have noticed larger media outlets starting to reference Hyperliquid to track oil prices after market hours. As volumes and asset selection continue to grow, Hyperliquid might soon join Polymarket as a permanent fixture on the screen tickers of CNBC and its peers.

Zooming back into crypto markets, it’s clear that perpetuals are no longer just a crypto-native product. They’re expanding into RWAs like commodities, equities, and indices.

For equities, this intuitively seems easier anyway. Building true onchain representations of stocks has so far proven to be messy in practice. By contrast, a perpetual that simply tracks the price sidesteps that complexity and delivers the one thing most traders actually want: clean, continuous exposure.

Today, we’ll also talk about:

• CoinShares follows Bitwise into onchain asset management
• CFTC allows Phantom to plug into derivatives markets

HIGH SIGNAL NEWS

• SEC and CFTC define crypto asset taxonomy. In a joint interpretive release, the agencies define which digital assets qualify as securities versus non-securities, outline when activities like token issuance or distribution trigger securities treatment, and introduce a framework where assets can transition out of securities status over time. 🇺🇸
• Polymarket acquires infrastructure startup Brahma. According to Fortune, the acquisition is expected to improve the prediction market’s user experience and help boost activity in niche markets. 🤝
• Kraken enters enterprise crypto infrastructure market. Through “Payward Services,” the firm aims to offer companies a single integration for stablecoin payments, tokenized asset markets, digital asset trading, staking, lending, and global fiat and crypto funding rails. 🐙
• SEC approves Nasdaq’s tokenized securities rule change. The update enables select Nasdaq-listed securities to trade and settle in tokenized form during DTC’s pilot, alongside their traditional counterparts. The tokenized shares will trade on the same order book as conventional shares and carry the same shareholder rights and privileges. 🟢
• Spiko and Amundi launch tokenized fund. Called SAFO (Spiko Amundi Overnight Swap Fund), it is a regulated French fund designed for treasury and collateral management, offering multi-currency access (EUR, USD, GBP, CHF) and targeting stable yields above risk-free benchmarks. 🇫🇷

TOP STORY

CoinShares Expands Into Onchain Asset Management, Brings Multi-Asset Portfolios Onchain

Onchain push: On Wednesday, Europe’s largest publicly listed digital asset manager CoinShares announced plans to launch its first ever DeFi-powered yield product, marking the firm's expansion into the growing onchain asset management space. The move comes alongside a strategic partnership with French startup Kiln, whose Railnet solution will serve as the underlying infrastructure for the new offering.

How it works: The product offers access to a diversified strategy that allocates capital across multiple yield sources, including:

• DeFi lending protocols (Aave, Morpho, Compound)
• Tokenized funds and ETFs (Ondo, WisdomTree, Securitize)
• Institutional credit (Maple Finance)
• Market-neutral strategies (Ethena)

Railnet’s open architecture brings these sources together within a single onchain vault, while CoinShares acts as the regulated portfolio manager overseeing capital allocation. The product will initially launch as a B2B2C offering for exchanges, custodians, and fintech platforms.

Illustrative example by Blockstories; not an exact representation of CoinShares’ architecture

Growing momentum: The announcement represents the second major digital asset manager launching an onchain investment product in recent months. In January, U.S. firm Bitwise launched its first onchain vault product built on top of the lending protocol Morpho.

• Why it matters: Onchain asset management is a rapidly expanding category within crypto. Since early 2025, AUM across onchain yield strategies more than doubled to over $35 billion. This growth has been driven primarily by crypto-native capital seeking yield, with the space so far dominated by specialized crypto-native risk curators such as Steakhouse Financial and Gauntlet managing the underlying strategies.

Tailwinds ahead: But as digital assets continue to institutionalize and regulatory clarity around DeFi integration takes shape, onchain strategies are growing increasingly attractive to non-crypto-native and institutional capital, with projections placing AUM between $41 and $85 billion in 2026.

Source: DefiLlama, Keyrock

Strategic importance: “We see onchain asset management as a key third pillar of CoinShares, alongside our ETPs and active strategies. In the near term, we expect it to remain smaller than our roughly $6 billion ETP business. Over the long term, however, the opportunity is larger: the onchain risk curator segment already accounts for around $7 billion in total value locked, and we believe that, with strong execution, we can capture a meaningful share of this growing market,” told us Jérôme Castille, Managing Director at CoinShares.

Interview: In our conversation, Castille also explained why CoinShares chose Railnet over Morpho’s vault model used by Bitwise, and highlighted the types of onchain investment products likely to attract institutional capital next.

Who are the target clients of your new product?

Bitwise decided to become a vault curator on Morpho. Why did you choose Railnet instead?

Do you expect this kind of product to also appeal to traditional institutional investors in the future?

What does the long-term product roadmap look like?

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Onchain asset management is attracting traditional players as growth accelerates. With AUM in onchain yield strategies projected to reach between $41.6 billion and $85 billion in 2026, firms like CoinShares are entering the space to capture this expanding opportunity.
• Demand is driven by platforms sitting on idle stablecoin liquidity. Exchanges, custodians, and fintechs are seeking to generate yield and retain users, especially during periods of low trading activity when capital rotates away from crypto into traditional instruments.
• Diversification beyond crypto-native yield is becoming essential. With over 80% of DeFi lending yields moving in tandem, combining them with tokenized RWAs such as treasuries, ETFs, and private credit creates a more balanced return profile.
• New infrastructure is enabling new product categories. Unlike single-protocol vault models, Railnet allows CoinShares to allocate across DeFi lending, tokenized funds, private credit, and market-neutral strategies within a single portfolio, pointing toward "ETFs 2.0".
• Institutional adoption will start with familiar assets and expand over time. Attracting institutional capital requires blending tokenized versions of familiar instruments such as T-bills with DeFi lending to offer continuous liquidity. As institutions gain experience and observe these benefits in practice, allocations are likely to move deeper into DeFi.

MetaComp | $35 million | Pre-A+ : Singapore-based infrastructure provider that bridges fiat and stablecoin rails for institutional cross-border payments, treasury management, and tokenized wealth services.

Ironlight | $21 million | Series A : Alternative trading system designed to handle issuance, trading, and settlement of blockchain-based securities within existing U.S. market rules.

TransFi | $14.2 million | Series A : Stablecoin payments infrastructure firm.

What’s the news?

On Tuesday, leading wallet provider Phantom secured no-action relief from the CFTC, allowing the company to act as a non-custodial interface to CFTC-registered exchanges such as the CME or Kalshi.

• What it means: For the first time, a self-custodial wallet like Phantom can connect to U.S.-regulated derivatives exchanges and enable its users to trade on them without having to register as an introducing broker. This relief is specific to Phantom, meaning other providers would need to engage with the CFTC and obtain similar relief themselves.

Why it matters: We spoke with Ayana Dow, Senior Counsel at the DeFi Education Fund, a Washington-based nonprofit focused on DeFi policy, to understand what this relief means for Phantom and why it matters for the broader DeFi landscape.

Disclaimer: The information provided in the Crypto Briefing by Blockstories does not constitute investment advice. Accordingly, we assume no liability for any investment decisions made based on the content presented herein.