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- First Trust, a US investment company, filed for a metaverse-themed exchange traded fund on Tuesday.
- The First Trust Indxx Metaverse ET would trade on the Nasdaq and contain stocks exposed to the metaverse.
- The company isn’t the first. Rival Roundhill launched a metaverse ETF in June.
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First Trust, a US investment company, applied to list a metaverse-themed exchange traded fund on Tuesday, as the virtual world expands and people look for more investment products tied to this area.
The First Trust Indxx Metaverse ETF would trade on the Nasdaq, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The ETF would use the Indxx Global Metaverse Index as a benchmark, the filing showed.
Investors have described the metaverse, an immersive digital version of the real world, as a multi-trillion dollar opportunity. People have spent millions in the last few weeks alone on plots of digital land and other virtual assets on platforms such as Sandbox and Decentraland.
“The index is composed of common stocks and depositary receipts issued by US and non-US companies that are involved in the ‘metaverse’,” First Trust said in the filing to US regulators.
“These companies are developing virtual-reality spaces integrated with artificial intelligence and 3D technologies where users can interconnect within a computer simulated environment.”
First Trust said its index would contain the kinds of companies that develop content or software for virtual-reality programs, or that give access to the metaverse or leverage the virtual world to “revolutionize payment gateways”.
The ETF will also include companies that provide displays, as well as semiconductors and other computing hardware. Companies must have a minimum market capitalization of $5 billion, the filing said.
First Trust is not the first to pursue a metaverse-themed ETF. Roundhill Investments launched its Metaverse ETF on June 30 with the ticker META on the NYSE Arca exchange. It has $864 million assets under management.
South Korea-based ETF provider Fount launched a metaverse ETF that started trading on October 27 with the ticker MTVR in New York, with $8 million in assets under management.
