South Africa has a new cryptocurrency exchange

A new cryptocurrency exchange, BitFund, has been launched in South Africa offering access to 20 of the largest digital currencies worldwide.

BitFund offers a single point of entry to structure a portfolio and securely stores these locally off the international exchanges in hardware digital wallets, which are in turn stored in physical vaults to reduce the threat from online hackers.

Founded by Joshua Miltz, Jonathon Ferrer, Bradley Goldman and Dean Joffe, BitFund offers investors access to cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, ethereum, ripple and litecoin.

“In South Africa, the only safe and easy way to get investment exposure into cryptocurrencies is through buying bitcoin and ethereum and these are currently only available through a single exchange,” Miltz said.

“Most potential investors lack the technical knowledge and confidence to manually purchase the lesser known cryptocurrencies on international exchanges, but BitFund makes it possible for them to do so.”

BitFund manages all tax-related issues as well as exchange control and technical due diligence of investing in multiple cryptocurrencies. “We have also dealt thoroughly with the legal and regulatory compliance of cryptocurrency investment,” Miltz said. “The BitFund website has been designed to be safe and simple to navigate, opening up cryptocurrency investing to more people.”

BitFund has created three pre-specified portfolios that have been structured to remove the complication of selecting individual cryptocurrencies. These are:

  • The Balanced 10 Portfolio, which holds each of the top 10 largest cryptocurrencies weighted by their market capitalisation;
  • The Equal 10 Portfolio, which holds each of the top 10 largest cryptocurrencies with equal weighting of 10% each; and
  • The Capped 20 Portfolio, which holds each of the top 20 largest cryptocurrencies, weighted by their market capitalisations, with a maximum of 15% per cryptocurrency.

Fee structure

BitFind charges a flat annual management fee of 2.4% and a 1% exit fee on a minimum investment amount of R1 000.

“The company has an experienced team of financial, legal and technology experts who ensure that both the platform and its investors comply with local and international tax and regulatory frameworks,” it said in a statement.

“We provide relevant reporting to ensure auditability and transparency into portfolio holdings and rebalancing at a transactional level,” said co-founder Ferrer.

Portfolios are rebalanced weekly to fortnightly to keep investors’ desired exposure stable, and to adjust portfolios based on market performance. The only time that a portion of the funds in the various portfolios resides on an international exchange, including Binance, Bitstamp and Bittrex, is briefly during the rebalancing process.

Investors can customise their portfolios according to their preferences via BitFund. It also provides real-time market data to institutional investors and easy investment into individual cryptocurrencies, BitFund portfolios or custom-weighted portfolios.  — © 2018 NewsCentral Media

Source: techcentral.co.za