BYE BYE ETFs! Not tomorrow, not next week, BUT somewhere in the not too distant future, ETFs may become obsolete. So says Som Seif. And, just who is Som Seif? Well he is a Canadian ETF entrepreneur who built one of Canada's first exchange traded fund companies (Claymore Investments if you want to check) into a $8 billion AUM giant before he sold it to BlackRock. Now his new firm (Purpose Investments), which just passed over $5 billion AUM and on its way to $25 billion, is looking ahead to the future when technology, blockchain and cryptocurrencies may make ETF's obsolete. Som speculates the ETF industry may go to......ZERO. Yup, that's 0 (ZERO). Exchange traded tokens (security tokens particularly) are here and their uses have not even hatched yet. Yeah, I know, no one saw bitcoin as viable either. Things are happening North of the border (around the globe actually) and Som is way out in front.
(Bill Taylor/Managing Editor)
"Canadian ETF entrepreneur Som Seif plans to announce an acquisition and new minority partner as soon as this week as he works to quintuple assets at his latest venture.
Seif's goal is to grow Purpose Investments Inc., which currently manages about $5-billion in ETFs and mutual funds, to $25-billion to $30-billion in five or six years. As part of that plan, Purpose will bring in a new investor alongside the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System. The pension fund took a stake last year; Seif declined to say what size.
Seif built Claymore Investments Inc. into one of Canada's first exchange traded fund companies. It had $8-billion in assets when he sold it to a Canadian unit of BlackRock Inc. in 2012 for an undisclosed sum. As he works to bolster his new firm he's also preparing for a day when new technologies, including cryptocurrencies and blockchain, might make ETFs obsolete....
This is where Ethereum Capital Inc. comes in. The company is partially financed by Purpose as well OMERS. It aims to find early-stage investments that are built on the Ethereum blockchain, a rival to Bitcoin created by Canadian Vitalik Buterin, which Seif sees as ultimately becoming dominant...
The industries that stand to be disrupted by blockchain may also include ETFs, the funds Seif has built his career on. He said he sees a day when tokens, a form of cryptocurrency, become a lower cost, more efficient version of ETFs..."
Source: TheGlobeandmail