Treasury Associate

Institutions get their bitcoin on-ramp, but regulators keep hitting the brakes. Key takeaways. * - Goldman Sachs is paying up to $2.25 billion for NEOS Investments, adding the $1.1 billion BTCI fund to compete directly with BlackRock's bitcoin income ETF. * - Ripple's new MiCA CASP license from Luxembourg's CSSF lets it serve all 30 EEA states under one regulated framework. * - Bitcoin's 30-day trading range has narrowed to 5.6%, among the tightest on record, even as the SEC delayed its tokenized securities exemption and pulled a scheduled rulemaking meeting. Institutional infrastructure for bitcoin is expanding faster than the regulatory rules meant to govern it. Goldman Sachs' move to acquire NEOS Investments puts a Wall Street bank directly into the bitcoin income ETF race, competing with BlackRock's BITA product for a slice of a market that barely existed two years ago. The price tag - up to $2.25 billion - signals how seriously large asset managers now treat bitcoin-linked yield products as a durable business line, not a side bet. BTC: Goldman Sachs is buying its way into the bitcoin income ETF race. The bank is acquiring NEOS Investments for up to $2.25B, picking up the $1.1B BTCI fund and going head-to-head with BlackRock's BITA. pic.twitter.com/9isBoGLQav - CoinDesk (@CoinDesk) August 12, 2026 At 1 USD = 0.0000 BTC as of August 16, bitcoin's dollar price keeps it firmly in six-figure territory, and the asset's volatility has compressed sharply. CoinDesk data shows the 30-day trading range at just 5.6%, one of the tightest windows on record. Analyst James Check has flagged this pattern before - it tends to show up at inflection points, either late in a bear market or early in a new bull cycle. What's driving this move. Two forces are pulling in opposite directions. On one side, regulated on-ramps are multiplying. Ripple's MiCA Crypto Asset Service Provider license from the CSSF, paired with its EU electronic money institution license, lets the company collect, exchange and pay out across all 30 EEA nations through a single regulated relationship. Coinbase is expanding too, rolling out derivatives - futures, perpetuals and options across more than 170 contracts - to UK professional investors with leverage up to 50x. "Regulatory clarity is the foundation of institutional trust." Last month, Ripple received full EU authorization for a MiCA Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP) license from Luxembourg's CSSF. 🇪🇺 With its EU EMI license, institutions across all 30 EEA nations can now collect,... pic.twitter.com/lyj9pOnpPH - Ripple (@Ripple) August 5, 2026 On the other side, US regulators are slowing down. The SEC delayed its planned "innovation exemption" for tokenized securities and canceled a scheduled meeting on proposed crypto offering rules. Shares of tokenization-focused firms - Bullish, Figure, Coinbase and Circle - all slipped Friday on the news. The contrast is stark: Europe is building unified licensing frameworks while US rulemaking stalls, pushing institutional product development toward jurisdictions with clearer timelines. MARKETS: Shares of tokenization-focused firms including Bullish (BLSH), Figure (FIGR), Coinbase (COIN) and Circle (CRCL) slipped Friday as the SEC delayed its planned "innovation exemption" for tokenized securities and canceled meeting on proposed crypto offering rules. pic.twitter.com/qwvF5qFPoV - CoinDesk (@CoinDesk) August 14, 2026 What this means in practice. For a corporate treasurer converting dollar reserves into bitcoin exposure - whether through a spot allocation or an income ETF like BTCI - the calculus now includes which regulatory regime touches the transaction. A firm settling payments through Ripple's EU-licensed rails faces one compliance framework across 30 countries. A firm relying on a US tokenized security product faces regulatory uncertainty until the SEC clarifies its exemption timeline. At current rates, converting institutional-scale dollar positions into bitcoin means tracking a fractional BTC price per dollar that shifts by the hour. Anyone modeling exposure can check live figures through the USD to BTC converter rather than relying on stale screenshots from a trading desk. With volatility compressed to 5.6% over the past month, the entry price matters less than the regulatory path the capital takes to get there. Exchange rate data from Currency.Wiki. Track BTC rates and 170+ currencies. This article was generated with AI assistance using publicly available market data and is intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice. Exchange rate data from Currency.Wiki. Read its editorial standards and fact-checking process.

The VC-backed fintech using AI to challenge BlackRock and start a new fee war in ETFs. Published Fri, Aug 14 202610:00 AM EDT 0 seconds of 3 minutes, 58 seconds Volume 90% Listen 3min Key Points * Corgi Insurance CEO Nico Laqua says that he expects the fintech to soon challenge BlackRock for the lead in total number of ETFs available to investors. * The fintech startup has launched a massive suite of exchange-traded funds in record time, which Laqua told CNBC's "ETF Edge" was only possible through the use of AI to speed the regulatory approval process. * While BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street have been among the dominant forces in pushing down fees on core index products, Corgi is pressuring managers of trendy ETF strategies including buffered income and single-stock funds, in some cases at roughly half the price of competitors, or even steeper discounts. The fee war was supposed to be all but over in the ETF industry, with dominant fund companies led by Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street pushing fund fees as close to zero as they can get. But Corgi Invest, the new ETF arm of VC-backed fintech Cori Insurance, has other ideas. The San Francisco-based startup, which recently reached a valuation of $2.6 billion in its latest funding round, came out of seemingly nowhere staring last December to launch a massive suite of ETFs - 197 and counting. By the end of the year, it expects to have more ETFs than the largest issuer in the U.S., BlackRock, Corgi CEO Nico Laqua said on this week's "ETF Edge." In some cases, Corgi is going head-to-head with the largest ETF companies in core areas of the market - it has an ultrashort bond ETF, for example, which has been among the most popular recent core fixed-income strategies from the fund giants, as well as a handful of other bond options out farther on the treasury curve. And its ultrashort bond fund does come in at a lower expense ratio than the already low-cost offerings from the fund giants. But Corgi has also issued a challenge to ETF managers that have boomed in recent years with more trendy, niche strategies such as buffered income funds that limit downside risk in the stock market, as well as single-stock ETFs that allow for outsize bets on big names from Tesla to Nvidia - and all of which charge a lot more annually to investors than the core stock and bond index funds from the ETF giants. Corgi's approach to leveraged ETFs also includes outsize bets on sectors of the market and secular themes, such as AI-themed trades. Its buffered income funds are currently charging an annual fee of 30 basis points to investors. Recent research on buffered funds show expense ratios that typically average 70 basis points and above. Corgi's Tesla 2x ETF has an expense ratio of 20 basis points, versus competing products that charge fees as high as 95 basis points. As an insurance company, Corgi stands to benefit from the new ETF arms race it has started. It needs to invest what is known as "the float" from its premiums in the markets, and that became a big motivating factor for the company get into the fund business. It can serve itself and its insurance customers with lower fee ETFs as places to allocate the float rather than going out and investing in higher-cost products, Laqua said. But the fintech's focus on using technology, specifically AI, to build a more efficient business model within the insurance industry was also a significant factor leading Corgi to ETFs, which were not in the original business plan. Laqua said highly regulated businesses are often the ones that are the hardest to disrupt, but AI is knocking down the barriers to entry. Use of AI has been critical to the company's ability to launch so many ETF products in such a short period of time, he said. That's because the process of regulatory approval comes down to written language skills, and that is a task that AI is very good at, Laqua said, and he added it is among the reasons why he believes before long the company will be the largest issuer of ETFs in the U.S. He also says that no matter how long it takes, the company will patiently wait for investors discover it, and over time, Corgi is betting that it will benefit from the same asset-gathering force in the fund world that has led Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street to a combined $3 trillion: low-cost wins in the end. Watch the full "ETF Edge" show above to hear directly from Laqua on his company's plans to upend the ETF market. He also went deeper into Corgi's strategic thinking in this week's "ETF Edge" podcast.

Inside India newsletter: Why global funds are flocking to GIFT City in Modi's home state. Aug 13, 2026 - 07:17 Hello, this is Priyanka Salve, writing to you from Singapore. Welcome to the latest edition of "Inside India" - your one-stop destination for stories and developments from the world's fastest-growing large economy. India's Gujarat International Finance Tec-City, also known as GIFT City, aspires to be what Hong Kong is to mainland China, or what Dubai International Financial Center is to the United Arab Emirates. While progress has been slow, after more than a decade of its launch, GIFT City is finally drawing interest from leading asset management firms. I spoke with experts to figure out if India's first and only global financial center is finally coming into its own. The big story. Signage in Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City) in the suburbs of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, on Wednesday, May 21, 2025. A strong domestic investor appetite for global markets, relaxed rules for foreign currency usage, and increasing tax sops are driving leading asset management companies to India's GIFT City, more than a decade after its launch. GIFT City, located in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat, is emerging as an important gateway for international investors looking to access India's growth opportunity, as well as resident Indians seeking international wealth solutions, experts said. Earlier this year, the government improved tax structures to put GIFT City on par with global financial centers such as Singapore, said Rajesh Gandhi, Partner at Deloitte India. While these tax benefits are driving inbound investment, the government has also loosened capital controls on outbound investments made via the City, Gandhi said, adding that his firm was seeing an increase in outbound and inbound funds being set up in India's first global financial center. Global fund houses are waking up to the pent-up demand from Indian investors for overseas markets such as the U.S., and GIFT City offers the most convenient route, according to experts. Global interest. Last week, Standard Chartered announced plans to launch its Signature CIO funds from GIFT City. Samir Subberwal, global head of wealth solutions, retail products, data and analytics at Standard Chartered, told CNBC that the company will launch the funds "in the coming weeks" and plans to expand its suite of wealth solutions over time. The British international banking group was among the first foreign banks to start operating out of GIFT City in 2020. And with the launch of Signature CIO funds, it plans to expand its wealth management business in what Subberwal describes as "one of the world's fastest-growing international financial centres." Government data shows that fund management entities in the city increased to 217 in May this year from 194 in November last year. Another major global asset manager, BlackRock, through its joint venture with Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Jio Financial Services, is looking to launch global ETFs out of GIFT City. Jio BlackRock Asset Management, the joint venture company, secured regulatory approval to launch funds out of GIFT City in May. It is preparing to start two outbound funds from the financial center before the end of September, one global equity fund and another emerging markets fund, Rishi Kohli, the firm's chief investment officer, told Moneycontrol - a news outlet part of Network18, which is owned by Ambani's Reliance Industries. Due to strong capital controls, there are limits on the funds that asset managers in India can deploy in overseas markets, experts said, pointing to the aggregate $7 billion ceiling on outbound investments, which has already been exhausted. As a result, despite Indian markets underperforming their global peers by a wide margin, equity funds in India logged positive inflows for the 65th consecutive month, according to data from India's mutual fund industry body AMFI. But funds operating from GIFT City can change that as the outbound investment limits do not apply to them, allowing these funds to tap the growing pool of Indian investors. Long road ahead. But despite these tailwinds, experts said that GIFT City has a long way to go before it can compete with global financial centers such as Singapore, Delaware in the U.S., and Dubai International Financial Center in the United Arab Emirates. From a regulatory aspect, GIFT City is on par with other global financial centers, but it needs to shed its image as an India-specific center and emerge as a destination for global capital. It also needs to match the lifestyle benefits that come with living in cities such as Dubai and Singapore. Some argue that it just needs "more time" to develop. DIFC took 20 years to become the powerhouse it is today, said Vivek Singhania, co-founder of Mumbai-based fund administration service provider Dovetail Capital. He told CNBC that regulatory structures at the GIFT City were formed around 2020, and now things are gradually coming together. Singhania said his firm is in discussions with a several U.S. and Singapore-based funds as well as Indian funds that are keen to set up operations in city. Among those bullish on GIFT City is also Vikas Satija, managing director and chief executive at Shriram Wealth. His firm scouts for funds operating out of GIFT City for their "high-net-worth clients" in India and outside. He predicts that by 2030, GIFT City will become a key global financial center and adds that the arrival of one of the largest global fund houses, BlackRock, is a "big sign." Need to know. The 72-hour crisis that threatened Meta's business in India Tensions are high between Meta Platforms and Indian regulators. A parliamentary panel threatened to remove the tech giant's safe harbor protection last week, soon after after the company was pulled up over concerns about child-abuse content. U.S. judge ends graft case against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani A U.S. judge on Monday dismissed the bribery case against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, while also rebuking a senior Department of Justice official's conduct related to the case as "concerning." Aug. 14: India WPI inflation for July. Aug. 17: India unemployment rate for July.