NFTZ, well-known as the first exchange-traded fund for NFTs in the world, is shutting down. On the 27th of January, Defiance Digital Revolution announced that it would close and liquidate NFTZ by the 28th of February, 2023. In December 2021, when it was officially started in the market, Sylvia Jablonski, the co-founder & Chief Investment Officer at NFTZ, said that NFTs could be larger than the whole internet.
NFTZ basically tracked companies involved in the non-fungible token, well-known as NFTs, and cryptocurrency space. The companies NFTZ tracked are online marketplace eBay, digital asset exchange Coinbase, and toy collectibles firm Funko. And shares of this NFTZ fund were listed on the famous New York Stock Exchange. And in its first two days of trading in the market, the price of this NFT fund dropped by more than 11% from $24 to $21.
ETFs are basically famous investment vehicles that offer indirect exposure to an underlying asset via shares, such as foreign currencies, gold, and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. ETFs give investors the ability to expand their portfolios without having to hold such assets. And NFTZ was also an ETF that allowed investors to have a stake in several firms somehow related to the NFT space. In July 2022, KuCoin, a cryptocurrency exchange, launched its own NFT ETF that allowed its users to own proportionally shared ownership of native blue-chip NFTs, such as the Bored Ape Yacht Club.
NFTs are cryptographically unique tokens linked to digital or physical content, such as images, videos, and music. NFTs started in 2021, with different popular celebrities openly investing in or creating their own NFTs. Different companies, including eBay and Funko, also invested in NFT marketplaces and are involved in this emerging marketplace. But since the price of the leading cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies in the market dropped hugely, the interest of investors in the crypto world and NFTs got waned. Due to this low interest in NFTs, NFTZ is moving to close the first exchange-traded fund for NFTs.