The pioneering Digital Asset Taxonomy System (DATS) is now available for investment research teams and product issuers to license — a pivotal milestone for institutional investors to access the emerging crypto asset class.
London, Santa Monica, California, March 30, 2022 – Wilshire, a global investment technology and advisory company, and Digital Asset Research (DAR), a leading provider of crypto asset data and research, today announced the classification of the top 1,000 digital assets by market capitalization.
The pioneering Digital Asset Taxonomy System (DATS) data is now available to be licensed by:
● Investment research teams to conduct performance attribution
● Market data platforms to inform trading decisions
● Product issuers to build index-linked investment products
Mark Makepeace, CEO of Wilshire, said: “The rigorous approach to research and classification makes DATS the market standard for institutional investors, who need confidence in a rules-based taxonomy to conduct their research and make risk-adjusted asset allocation decisions.”
Doug Schwenk, CEO of DAR, said: “The delivery of DATS and the classification of the top 1,000 digital assets has been much anticipated by the market to measure sector-level risks and performance drivers. DATS is now the only truly institutional industry classification standard for digital assets, given its breadth of coverage, transparency, and objective governance structure.”
Composition of the top 1,000 digital assets
The classification system expands beyond Digital Currencies that has the smallest constituent count of the three DATS supersectors.
1. Computation Platforms – 45.2% of assets; includes application tokens such as metaverse-related tokens and smart contract platforms
2. Financial Instruments – 36.0% of assets; includes DAO governance tokens and staking tokens
3. Digital Currencies – 18.8% of the universe; includes standard monetary protocols, stable coins, and privacy coins
Sector Level and Thematic Overlays
The DATS construct has 3 supersectors that are further classified into 10 sectors and 42 subsectors. The full constituent counts are available on the Wilshire website with this table showing supersector and sector level classifications and constituents represented.
DATS also has the flexibility to group the 1,000 strong digital asset universe into popular investment themes. The two themes currently available include an Environmentally Focused cut with 33 digital assets and a Decentralized Finance (DeFi) cut with 245 assets that also has 7 sub-themes:
● Automated Market Maker (AMM)
● Asset Management
● Derivatives
● Lending and Borrowing
● Prediction Markets
● Yield Aggregator
Full information on DATS can be found at wilshire.com/dats.