Australian FinTech company profile #134 – Monochrome Asset Management
1. Company Name: Monochrome Asset Management
2. Website: www.monochrome.co
3. Key Staff & Titles:
- David Hobart – Chief Investment Officer
- Jeff Yew – CEO & Director
- Kevin Saunders – Trustee/Responsible Manager
4. Location(s): Brisbane, Australia
5. In one sentence, what does your fintech do?:
Monochrome Asset Management Pty Ltd is the Investment Manager of the Monochrome Bitcoin Fund (MBF) – a capital growth investment fund for Australian investors seeking a secure, regulated and familiar investment vehicle that tracks the price of bitcoin.
6. How / why did you start your fintech company?:
The Monochrome Bitcoin Fund was established to fill a significant gap in the Australian wholesale market, enabling wholesale and institutional investors to gain exposure to bitcoin without the compliance and security risks associated with engaging with new technologies and blockchain wallets.
Consumer lead demand is strengthening and Monochrome seeks to become the primary and trusted channel for digital asset exposure for Australian institutional, wholesale, and HNW clients.
The Monochrome Bitcoin Fund offers a passive bitcoin tracker fund to wholesale investors in the form of a unit trust. Investors may allocate small portions of their overall portfolio to the fund in order to diversify their investment strategy.
The Fund’s investment strategy follows transparent and robust execution procedures to minimise spreads, and track a publicly auditable BTC benchmark rate. For risk management purposes, the fund will not engage in derivatives, leverage, or short selling, and has adopted a strictly passive ‘buy and hold’ strategy.
Monochrome will prioritise the release of passive, single asset tracker funds and will launch new products in line with market demand. These investment trusts will be capital growth oriented funds designed to make gaining exposure to high growth digital assets simple. Investment trusts with high yield components are being explored by the research team.
Monochrome’s products make investing in high-growth digital assets simple. The use of a unit trust structure allows investing to be compatible with traditional service providers and removes the need for investors to engage with new technologies, which whilst improving, can still be cumbersome to manage.
As Bitcoin grows into a globally recognised store of value, Australian wholesale investors should have the ability to safely gain digital asset exposure in a diversified portfolio via a safe and regulated investment vehicle – which is what the Monochrome Bitcoin Fund provides.
7. What is the best thing your company has achieved or learnt along the way (this can include awards, capital raising etc)?:
Monochrome Asset Management was registered in February of 2021. In a short period of time the manager has hired key staff and launched its first wholesale product in the form of the Monochrome Bitcoin Fund.
Monochrome Asset Management has been featured in numerous mainstream media publications including The Australian Financial Review, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, and trade publications such as Money Management and Investment Centre.
Monochrome’s CEO, Jeff Yew, spoke about the global race towards Bitcoin ETFs at the Inside ETFs Conference at the ASX auditorium in Sydney on 15 June 2021.
8. What’s next for your company? And are you looking to expand overseas or stay focused on Australia?:
Monochrome seeks to be the torchbearer of institutional-grade access to digital assets in Australia, starting with the Monochrome Bitcoin Fund. The firm is in the process of launching Australia’s first Bitcoin ETF.
9. What other fintechs or companies do you admire?:
Superhero
