21shares Ditches the Autopilot: Crypto ETFs Get an Active Manager's Playbook

21shares' president, Duncan Moir, is declaring the era of the "set-it-and-forget-it" crypto ETF officially over. In a chat with Cointelegraph, Moir posits that a young, volatile asset class is screaming for active strategies that mix deep-dive token analysis with the kind of top-down risk management that keeps portfolios from going full degen.

To make this happen, 21shares has been on a hiring spree, bulking up its trading and portfolio squads to cook up what it calls "strong actively managed products." They're not alone in this play; active ETFs globally were sitting on a cool $1.8 trillion in assets by the end of 2025, per data from Morningstar and Goldman Sachs Asset Management—proof that even traditional finance likes to feel smart sometimes.

The firm's recent acquisition by FalconX last October is like strapping a rocket to its product development. Moir points out a geographic split in cravings: U.S. investors are still mostly apeing into the blue-chip coins, while European institutions, with their more refined palates, are sniffing around newer assets and the application layer beyond the basic L1s.

Catering to that sophisticated European hunger, 21shares rolled out a European ETP pegged to Strategy's preferred stock (STRC), offering a slice of a high-yield instrument linked to its Bitcoin-centric capital play. Early appetite has been "strong" across several regions, showing that yield farming isn't just for DeFi degens—it's for your traditional brokerage account, too.

Staking is the other shiny object everyone wants. Grayscale kicked it off in October by adding staking to its ETPs, making its Ether funds the first U.S.-listed spot crypto ETFs to dole out those sweet, sweet staking rewards (with a Solana trust waiting in the wings). Not to be outdone, BlackRock launched a Nasdaq-listed Ethereum product in March that bundles spot exposure with staking, pulling in $15.5 million in volume on its first day—because why just hold ETH when you can make it work for you?

When deciding what to launch next, Moir says 21shares uses a three-part filter: its own research, client FOMO, and broader market vibes. This recipe can cook up anything from a hyper-focused single-token product to a broader thematic offering. Their Bitcoin-and-gold ETP, now cross-listed in London after four years, is the poster child, reportedly delivering some of the best risk-adjusted returns in Europe and offering the classic "don't put all your eggs in one blockchain" diversification.

The bottom line? As crypto ETFs grow up, 21shares is betting that active management—powered by research, demand signals, and a generous side of staking yield—will be the next level for investors who think "HODL" is a starting point, not a strategy.