Crypto bull Barry Silbert said he bet on a leveraged stock-market volatility fund earlier, to some derision…now it’s up about 20% on the week
Barry Silbert, a power player in the digital-asset sector, earlier this week tweeted that he was going to go long on a leveraged volatility product.
Silbert pointed specifically to the ProShares Ultra VIX Short-Term Futures UVXY,
The underlying benchmark for the UVXY is a leveraged version of what’s behind the Barclays iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN VXX,
The UVXY isn’t the same as exposure the Cboe Volatility Index VIX,
On Friday, the UVXY was up by about 13% and enjoying a nearly 20% rise for the week. The jump for the product comes as the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA,
In any case, Silbert’s initial tweet about purchasing UVXY was met with some derision earlier this week, but he seemed to be enjoying the leveraged ETFs gains on Friday.
For its part, the VIX, which uses options prices on S&P 500 stocks to gauge implied, or expected, volatility for the benchmark over the coming 30-day period, jumped around 16% on Friday to near the index’s historical average at around 20. The VIX rose more than 32% on the week.
It is worth noting that Silbert knows a thing or two about equities: Second Market, a popular trading exchange for private-company stock that he founded in 2004, was sold to Nasdaq Inc. NDAQ in 2015 for an undisclosed sum.
In a separate tweet he cautioned would-be followers of his UVXY bet that the product isn’t designed for long-term holdings because it will eventually go to zero.
Silbert is considered a luminary in the world of digital assets, after founding two of the most widely known enterprises in crypto: Grayscale Investments, which runs the popular Grayscale Bitcoin Trust GBTC,
Crypto markets were also under pressure on Friday. Bitcoin BTCUSD,