Makara robo facilitates investing in crypto

[NC] Hi everyone, I’m Nicole Casperson with Investment News and welcome to Three Questions.

A newcomer to the already competitive digital advice space is betting on the thriving crypto currency market to offer investors robo advice services with a focus on crypto assets. Meet Makara, a Seattle-based Registered Investment Advisor with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

With us to tell us more about Makara’s official launch, which happened June 1st, is co-founder Jesse Proudman. Thanks Jesse for joining us.

[JP] Thanks for having me.

[NC] First, please tell us more about how Makara works as a crypto-focused robo advisor and how it helps give better passive exposure given their is no bitcoin ETF yet.

[JP] Absolutely. So, we’ve been involved in this asset class for the last three and-a-half years running a systematic hedge fund, and over that time we’ve come to recognize that for everyday investors it’s just too hard to participate here. Everything is named the same thing, you’ve got to learn a whole new lexicon, and you participate in an experience that is unfamiliar and unfriendly to what you’ve been accustomed to. In theory a bitcoin ETF would solve that but it creates a whole host of additional challenges around liquidity and around market timing. And so what we’ve tried to do with Makara is create the experience you would get from an ETF, or from thematic ETFs, and deliver that to everyday investors in a way that gives them an easier way to access the crypto currency space.

[NC] And can you share with us the level of demand you’ve seen including waitlist sign ups and assets under management?

[JP] Absolutely. So we started the wait list in mid-March ahead of our formal launch, which you mentioned was June 1st, and today we’re almost at 30,000 users on the wait list. We’re in a beta process tight now with initial friends of the firm as we take new wait list users aboard, and we have over multiple millions on AUM on the platform today.

[NC] Fantastic! And now that Makara is officially available, how can users gain access and when will the wait list turn into actually using the mobile app?

[JP] So you can go to Makara.com and sign up for the wait list. We’re pulling users off, effectively trying to make sure that each individual user has the best white glove experience as we onboard over the coming weeks. So we are pulling users off slowly at first and then hopefully much quicker. So working to get through that here over the next couple of weeks.

[NC] Well there you have it. The industry’s first crypto robo advisor is readily available and ready for sign ups. Amazing, so thank you Jesse for telling us more about Makara. And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in. We’ll see you next time.

See also: The rise of the crypto robo-advisors