FTSE Russell Convenes Sep 21, 2026 15m 5m saved
With Russell Barlow, CEO of 21Shares · Stephen Coltman, Head of Macro at 21Shares
Bitcoin turns over about $50 billion on an average day. The aggregate volume of every company in the FTSE 100 is around £7 billion.
The standard objection to crypto from traditional finance is that it is a niche, speculative corner of the market. Stephen Coltman put two ordinary market-structure numbers against that, then a third: the UK gilt market, which is far larger than the equity index, trades perhaps £30 billion to £40 billion a day.
"The UK main index is not a niche asset and look at the UK gilt market, the debt market which is substantially larger but still trades maybe 30 to £40 billion worth a day."
Russell Barlow, CEO of 21Shares, and Coltman, its Head of Macro, run the largest crypto exchange-traded product issuer in Europe by market share and by number of products, and they were on FTSE Russell Convenes to argue that a zero allocation is now something an investor has to defend.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 15 minutes of audio, 11 minutes of reading.
Here are the 6 insights that matter.
Key Takeaways
21Shares showed conviction by being first rather than by being loud — first index ETP, first physically backed Bitcoin and Ethereum products, first in the UK and Australia
It set up in Europe because the rules were ready there, rather than waiting for the US
Tokenization is not going to replace the ETF, because the trading, custody and administration built around the wrapper took decades
Where it does fit first is assets you cannot put in an ETF: a specific building, a private company, IP royalties, a piece of fine art
"The wrapper is not the moat" — the expertise in the asset class is
Bitcoin turns over about $50B a day against the FTSE 100's £7B, which is Coltman's answer to calling it niche
Its volatility is converging on gold's, and is now similar to a large-cap US tech stock
Hyperliquid's breakout came from the war with Iran, because people needed to trade oil at the weekend
A 0% crypto allocation is now an active decision rather than a default, which is the change both men say the regulators made
1. First, On Purpose
Ryan Sullivan opened on 21Shares' founding in 2018, when crypto regulation globally was a patchwork, and asked how the firm held its conviction through that uncertainty. Barlow did not answer with a thesis. He answered with a list of dates.
Conviction was demonstrated by going first
That conviction came from really our belief that digital assets and cryptocurrency was a technology that's here to stay. At the time, we really demonstrated our conviction by being first.
Russell Barlow
The specific firsts
We were the first into the marketplace with an index ETP. We were first to the market with a physically backed Bitcoin and then an Ethereum ETP. We were first into markets such as the UK and Australia.
Russell Barlow
When the US opened, he said, the firm was there on day one with Bitcoin and again on day one with Ethereum, and has kept being first with products including Sui and Hyperliquid. The choice of where to start was regulatory rather than commercial.
Europe first, because the rules were there first
We set ourselves up in Europe primarily because the regulatory framework at the time was more open and accepting of crypto assets. We didn't want to wait until the US was ready.
Russell Barlow
That is what produced the current position, he said: the largest issuer in Europe both by market share and by the number of products in the market. Sullivan put the count at over 50 products globally.
2. The Wrapper Isn't A Moat
Sullivan raised tokenization and the claim, now common at FTSE Russell and elsewhere, that it will replace the ETF wrapper. He called it a good headline and asked whether it is true. Coltman said no, and gave the reason in one word: infrastructure.
Decades of plumbing sit behind the ETF
I think we're a long way from tokenisation, replacing the ETF industry.
Stephen Coltman
Trading, custody and administration have all been built around that wrapper, he said, and that will keep it the main way people invest for years. Where tokenization fits first is the set of assets an ETF cannot hold.
The near-term use cases are things you cannot put in a fund
So tokenising things like specific buildings and a real estate project or specific private equity businesses, royalties related to IP, pieces of fine art, these, kind of, more niche use cases which you can't replicate within an ETF.
Stephen Coltman
The value there, he said, is partly that a token produces a publicly visible price for an asset an owner otherwise has to mark by hand. Longer term the back-office efficiencies and cost savings start to pull the market infrastructure across, but he put that at many years away and said it is not a threat in the immediate term.
Barlow took the same question from the issuer's side and refused the premise that the format is what competitors compete on.
The format is not the advantage
Yeah, I think what you need to remember is that the wrapper is not the moat. So it isn't the wrapper that makes you kind of better or worse than another issuer. It's actually the expertise that you have in that particular area.
Russell Barlow
Over time tokenized offerings will take a larger share of how capital reaches the ecosystem, he said, but ETPs and ETFs are the product of choice right now because they have regulatory and market-infrastructure clarity. Sullivan pointed out that this is what the ETF market itself looked like 30 years ago: a handful of providers and not much back-office function, before it became the must-have.
Standing in the way of it would be the mistake
And that's just innovation and progression. And I think you could try and stand in the way of that, then you're probably doing a disservice to the industry.
Russell Barlow
3. $50B A Day Is Not Niche
Sullivan picked up Coltman's word, niche, and turned it on the asset class itself: plenty of people in traditional finance would call crypto niche. Coltman said the volumes say otherwise, and that the reason people in traditional finance do not know it is that the regulation only arrived recently.
Bigger than most people in the industry think
Well, I think it's already today a much bigger market than most people recognise.
Stephen Coltman
The comparison he uses
But when you look at the scale of the industry today, Bitcoin trades easily $50 billion in a day. And you compare that with the FTSE 100 where the aggregate volume of all the FTSE 100 companies is typically around £7 billion a day.
Stephen Coltman
He then reached for the larger UK market to close the argument off.
Even the gilt market trades less
The UK main index is not a niche asset and look at the UK gilt market, the debt market which is substantially larger but still trades maybe 30 to £40 billion worth a day.
Stephen Coltman
The second objection he took on is volatility. It has been coming down, he said, and 21Shares can see it inside one of its own products.
A gold-and-Bitcoin product is rebalancing toward Bitcoin
So we have a product that balances gold and Bitcoin together on a volatility adjusted basis and that weighting in Bitcoin has just been steadily increasing over time as the Bitcoin volatility has come more in line with that of gold and more comparable. It's a similar volatility to a large cap US tech stock.
Stephen Coltman
4. Hyperliquid And The War
Sullivan asked each of them what had surprised them most about the asset class this year. Barlow started with the thing an ETP issuer has to live with, which is that the instruments trade 24 hours a day, every day, while the products wrapping them do not. Then he named the real surprise as the regulators.
The pace of regulatory change, not its direction
So the regulatory backdrop's been something that surprised me. I expected it to pick up and to be more favourable. But maybe the pace at which it has happened and really it's been led here in the US with the SEC's changing stance has been a really favourable dynamic in terms of the market environment.
Russell Barlow
Sullivan noted that a positive surprise from a regulator is not the usual direction of travel. Coltman's answer was a venue rather than a rule: Hyperliquid, which 21Shares launched products on in Europe in the middle of last year and more recently in the US. The firm already had a positive view on the protocol. What it did not have was the catalyst.
The war with Iran is what made it happen
And what's been surprising is who would have thought that the start of the war with Iran would be the catalyst that drove this need for people to then be able to trade oil over the weekend.
Stephen Coltman
What it trades now
It was historically a very crypto focused exchange but is now increasingly trading traditional assets like the S&P 500, like oil and gold.
Stephen Coltman
Once the liquidity reached critical scale it compounded, he said, and the venue is now carrying SpaceX securities and other traditional-finance assets.
Conviction is easy, timing is not
You can have a positive view on something, but the catalyst that really gets it to take off and really succeed is just very hard to see beforehand.
Stephen Coltman
5. Blockchain You Can Touch
Barlow used that example to make a point about why AI has captured public imagination and blockchain has not, and he was frank that the enthusiasm gap runs the wrong way for his own view of the technology.
He rates blockchain's use case above AI's, and says nobody can feel it
But I feel blockchain technology actually has a much greater use case, and maybe more disruption can come from that.
Russell Barlow
Anyone can open Claude or ChatGPT and see the power immediately, he said, which is what blockchain has lacked. A venue where you can trade at the weekend, or trade a company's securities before it has listed, is the first thing that gives an ordinary investor something to do on a blockchain — and most of them, he added, will not know that is what they are doing.
6. Zero Is Now A Decision
Sullivan asked how the firm educates investors, retail and institutional. Barlow split the channels. The crypto-native retail audience already understands the differences between protocols, so the job there is demonstrating specialist credibility. The broader retail audience needs the case for why the technology has a role at all, and what it adds to a portfolio in return and diversification.
For advisers, high-net-worth clients and institutions the substance is the same but the vocabulary has to change: strategic asset allocation frameworks and long-term capital market assumptions. The framing he offered is not a valuation one.
Price it as venture, not as equity
One of the ways in which we like to think about articulating it, it's a lot of this technology is very early-stage venture investing.
Russell Barlow
Framed on earnings multiples the assets look expensive, he said. Framed as venture investing against the growth opportunity, the payback is visible. And the regulatory framework treating crypto as an emerging asset class is what changed the default.
Holding nothing is now the position that needs a defense
But now to not have a view to sit at a 0% allocation, that is something you actually probably do start to need to have to justify.
Russell Barlow
He conceded the bias openly, since 21Shares thinks the asset has a role, and said the honest test is the ordinary one: a positive expected return and a correlation that differs from the rest of the portfolio earns a place, after which the question is only sizing. Coltman put the same point in index terms.
A passive investor who owns none is taking an active bet
And to argue that crypto is not a part of that now is an increasingly anomalous position.
Stephen Coltman
If your philosophy is that you do not time the market and you want maximum diversification, he said, it is difficult to justify no exposure at all. Sullivan agreed that zero is itself an investment decision, and Barlow closed the conversation by naming it in the language of the people being asked.
Off benchmark
Maybe to use your analogy, it's off benchmark.
Russell Barlow
Bonus Insights
When the conversation happened
Ryan Sullivan opened by dating the recording to Thursday, September 17th, three days before the episode was posted. He also described the period as "we're halfway through 2026 give or take" when asking Barlow what had surprised him in the year's crypto performance.
The 24/7 problem nobody has solved
Barlow's first answer on surprises was really a structural complaint. The underlying instruments trade 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and the products built on them do not, so the firm has to be aware of what happens in the hours its own wrappers are shut. As he put it: "Well, our products don't trade 24/7, the instruments do."
Both men's bottom line is that the argument has moved: the question is no longer whether crypto is investable but whether an investor can explain owning none of it, and the thing that moved it was regulation rather than price.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
21Shares (Their firm, founded 2018. First to market with an index ETP and with physically backed Bitcoin and Ethereum products, first in the UK and Australia, and on the host's count over 50 products globally)
Bitcoin and Ethereum (The two assets 21Shares wrapped first. Bitcoin's roughly $50 billion of daily turnover is Coltman's argument against calling the asset class niche, and its volatility is converging on gold's)
Hyperliquid (Coltman's surprise of the year. 21Shares launched products on it in Europe in the middle of last year and more recently in the US; it now trades the S&P 500, oil, gold and SpaceX securities)
Sui (Another protocol 21Shares says it was first to market with in the US)
FTSE 100 (The comparison Coltman uses: the aggregate daily volume of every company in the index is around £7 billion)
Claude and ChatGPT (Barlow's example of why AI feels tangible to ordinary users in a way blockchain does not)
SpaceX (Its securities now trade on Hyperliquid, Coltman said, as an example of pre-IPO assets reaching a public venue)
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