New York-Based RIA Rolls Out New Blockchain Strategy

Josh O'Neill

4 January 2018

Beam Capital Management, the New York-based registered investment advisor, has launched a strategy focused on investing in publicly-listed companies operating in the blockchain sector.

The Blockchain Leaders SMA will not invest in crypto-currencies – digital tokens, like bitcoin, which use blockchain technology to facilitate transactions. Instead, it will invest in publicly-traded companies that are part of the burgeoning blockchain ecosystem.

“Blockchain technology has the potential to disrupt several industries,” Mohannad Aama, chief investment officer at Beam Capital Management, said. “We expect the universe of publicly traded blockchain stocks to significantly increase in 2018 and beyond. We believe that a professionally managed separately managed account offers easy access, transparency, liquidity, and control – four essential aspects of investing that individual and institutional investors value the most – particularly when it comes to investing in a new and potentially disruptive technology.”

The strategy is now live and is initially available to new and existing individual and institutional clients of Beam Capital Management, as well as to other RIAs which use TD Ameritrade Institutional to custody their clients’ assets.

A blockchain is a virtual distributed ledger of transactions shared peer-to-peer that can record ownership across a public network of computers rendered tamper-proof by advanced cryptography.

The technology is causing a stir within the financial services sector as its supporters believe it could reduce hidden expenses in the financial system by ousting inefficiencies across areas such as payments, syndicated loans and equity clearing.

Blockchain rose to fame in 2009 as the technology underpinning bitcoin, the first ever crypto-currency that over the past year has hit the mainstream and seen its value skyrocket more than 9000 per cent.

While banks and financial institutions have generally steered clear of bitcoin, they have spent millions of dollars on blockchain-related initiatives because of the technology’s ability to reconcile transactions without the need for a third-party authorizer.