Australian crypto hedge fund manager JellyC has merged with Singaporean Trovio Asset Management in an effort to attract bigger allocations from investors, such as pension fund investment.

According to a Bloomberg report on Oct. 23, Australian hedge fund manager JellyC will hold the majority of shares as it merges operations with Trovio Asset Management, said company executives.

CEO of Trovio, Jon Deane said Trovio plans to eventually dispose of shareholding in the merged business, but he did not specify when it is scheduled to occur.

JellyC’s Co-Founder Michael Prendiville said that the merger aims to grow the combined assets from both hedge fund managers up to 150% from current assets to $250 million AUD or equal to $166.5 million USD.

He stated that JellyC and Trovio have set their sights on big investors in the Asia Pacific region, especially Australian pension funds.

“If we’re not at capacity, we won’t get the allocation,” said Prendiville.

So far, Australia has yet to inject its pension funds into digital assets. Though, Prendiville believes this condition will change overtime, as Australia gears up to place crypto regulations.

In May 2024, Coinbase announced that it is working on a new service that would offer crypto investment products for portfolios that make up about a quarter of Australia‘s $2.5 trillion pension system.

Meanwhile other countries like Japan and South Korea have allocated pension funds into crypto-related entities. South Korea’s National Pension Service, which holds nearly $800 billion in assets under management, acquired 24,500 MicroStrategy shares for $33.75 million.

MicroStrategy is currently the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, owning over 252,000 BTC in their reserves.

Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund, the largest pension fund in Japan and globally, revealed in a press release that it is considering the possibility of accommodating Bitcoin and other commodities, including farmlands, forests and gold.

In July 2024, the State of Michigan Retirement System invested around $6.6 million in ARK 21Shares’ ARKB spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund.

Monochrome Asset Management is set to launch Australia’s first spot Ethereum exchange-traded fund on Tuesday.

The Ethereum (ETH) ETF will debut on the Cboe Australia, bringing the Monochrome Ethereum ETF with the ticker IETH to the market on Tuesday, Oct. 15.

IETH launches a few months after Monochrome unveiled its spot Bitcoin (BTC) ETF, which launched in August. The Monochrome Bitcoin ETF (IBTC) held about 167 Bitcoin, worth AUD 15 million.

Monochrome and its partner Vasco Trustees Limited filed an application for the listing of IETH on the Cboe Australia in early September, noting in an announcement that the spot Ethereum ETF would passively hold Ether.

That means the product would offer retail investors a regulated avenue to gain exposure to Ether, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, currently over $316 billion.

IETH is a dual-access fund, allowing for both cash and in-kind redemptions. For investors, this means the ability to buy and cash out of the ETF with the underlying asset, Ether. Meanwhile, State Street Australia will serve as the fund’s administrator. Digital assets custody provider BitGo and crypto exchange Gemini are the fund’s custody services providers.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved the first spot crypto ETFs in the U.S. in January 2024, giving the nod to funds that include spot Bitcoin ETFs by BlackRock, Fidelity Investments, and Grayscale.

The SEC went on to approve spot Ethereum ETFs in May, with trading going live in July. Hong Kong and Australia are among several countries to greenlight spot crypto ETFs.

However, while the value of assets held in these funds in countries like Australia is small, the U.S. market has seen a notable rise in demand. Data from ETF tracking site SoSoValue shows the total net assets in U.S.-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs as of Oct. 11 was $58.66 billion. Ethereum had $6.74 billion.