Calamos Investments Disrupts Bitcoin Market with Game-Changing Laddered ETFs

Wall Street's latest love affair with crypto just got a fresh coat of paint—and a ladder. Calamos Investments is bringing institutional-grade structure to Bitcoin with its new laddered ETF offering.

Why it matters: The move signals growing demand for sophisticated crypto products—even if traditional finance still can't decide if Bitcoin is digital gold or a speculative meme.

The big picture: Laddered ETFs could give investors more precise exposure while avoiding the gut-wrenching volatility that makes Bitcoin purists either rich or nauseous. Calamos is betting big that crypto's wild west days are over—or at least that enough suits want to pretend they are.

The cynical take: Nothing says 'mature asset class' like repackaging crypto in the same boring wrappers that made traditional investing so... thrilling. But hey—if it gets your conservative portfolio manager to finally stop rolling their eyes at your Bitcoin talk, maybe it's worth it.

Diversifying Exposure

Calamos Investments, an investment manager with over $40 billion in assets under management (AUM), filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last week for three separate exchange-traded funds (ETFs):

• Calamos Laddered Bitcoin Structured Alt Protection ETF (CBOY) – designed to match the positive (spot) price return of Bitcoin up to a defined cap while protecting against 100% of losses over one year (before fees and expenses).
• Laddered Bitcoin 80 Series Structured Alt Protection ETF (CBTY) – as CBOY, matches the positive (spot) price return up to a cap, whilst limiting maximum losses to 20%, over one year, before fees. Even if BTC’s price falls more than 20%, the ETF structure will not allow investors to lose more than 20% of their investment during the outcome period.
• Laddered Bitcoin 90 Series Structured Alt Protection ETF (CBXY) – as CBTY, but the loss protection is 10%.

This WOULD be the latest addition to the ETFs the company offers specifically for Bitcoin, with each one delivering fluctuating levels of downside protection.

“Providing exposure to bitcoin with limits on losses (and upside) can appeal to financial advisors and investors who have been interested in crypto, but leery of the volatility,” noted Matt Kaufman, head of ETFs at Calamos.“The financial advisory community hasn’t broadly adopted Bitcoin or crypto,” he said. “This creates a bridge into Bitcoin for people who otherwise wouldn’t approach it.”

The funds will utilize options and have exposure to the prices of up to five ETFs, which also happen to be the ones with the highest amounts of AUM, as of the time of writing, according to data from CoinGlass.

The tracked prices will be from the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT), with over $86 billion in assets under management, the Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust (BTC), $4 billion AUM, Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB), $4.8B AUM, Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) with $21 billion in managed assets, and Ark 21 Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) – $6 billion in AUM.

The funds are “laddered,” meaning they are invested in a BTC ETF with varying outcome periods, which brings diversification through exposure to different Bitcoin ETFs over time, as per the prospectuses.

Kaufman went further by elaborating that risk-adjusted returns in the portfolio can be altered, which could be enticing to investors, driving them to allocate more than 1% or 2% of their portfolio to Bitcoin, exceeding the general asset manager recommendation.

“That may also be the case for early-stage crypto investors, whose wealth has grown exponentially, and who now want to reduce risk and trade pure Bitcoin holdings for ETFs.”

An ETF Boom

It appears that the institutional demand for Bitcoin ETF products remains insatiable.

As CryptoPotato reported last week, such funds experienced a $7.78 billion inflow streak over 7 days.

Moreover, BlackRock’s fund, IBIT, generated more revenue than the one tracking the S&P 500, despite being active for only about 1.5 years. 

It is also worthwhile to note that majority-owned by the U.S. President, TRUMP Media & Technology Group (TMTG), filed for a Bitcoin ETF just last month.