STS Digital, a trading firm specializing in crypto options, unveiled a platform for structured products aimed at sophisticated investors as digital assets gain growing acceptance among traditional financial institutions.
A month after raising $30 million, the Bermuda-based company said the platform, which covers 400 tokens, is aimed at banks, family offices and high-net-worth individuals seeking returns on top of their spot market holdings. Kraken, the crypto exchange whose parent Payward participated in the fundraising, will offer the platform to its partners, STS Digital said in a statement shared with CoinDesk.
Crypto-structured products are seeing increasing demand as venture funds, portfolio managers and large mandate holders look for more tailored hedging solutions. Standard leveraged products such as futures and perpetuals, with their one-size-fits-all design, often fall short, particularly due to path dependence.
Structured products typically embed options that help navigate volatility and generate additional income on top of spot market holdings. Open interest is currently around $47 billion, according to TheTie, with Deribit holding the lion’s share.
For Kraken, the partnership is also about deepening its product range. According to the release, the exchange is leveraging STS’s derivatives expertise to power its Dual Investment product, introduced earlier this month, to allow qualified clients to earn fixed returns on bitcoin and ether (ETH).
The deal brings “structured strategies like covered calls to our platform, strengthens our growing suite of derivatives solutions, and provides clients with a new way to generate returns that differs from traditional crypto approaches like staking or lending,” Alexia Theodorou, director of derivatives at Kraken, said in the statement.
