The Digital Asset Taxonomy System now classifies 1,471 assets, the broadest coverage on the market
London, Santa Monica, and New York, January 30, 2023 – Wilshire, a global investment technology and advisory company, and Digital Asset Research (DAR), a specialized provider of ‘clean’ digital asset data, research and insights, today announced that 86 additional assets have been classified and added to the Digital Asset Taxonomy System (DATS) as a result of its rules-based quarterly review process.
DATS now classifies 1,471 digital assets, the broadest coverage in the market, to enable traditional and digital-native financial institutions to perform sector-based performance attribution, assess sector themes and construct custom portfolios.
DATS routinely classifies the top 1,000 digital assets by market capitalization at the end of each quarter. The classification of an additional 86 digital assets at the January review follows a turbulent trading period over the last three quarters which resulted in significant changes to the market capitalization of many digital assets.
There was also an additional theme added to the DATS as an effort to continuously enhance the quality of the classification. The theme Layer 1 was added for digital assets that are native assets of the underlying blockchain network they live on contributing to the security as well as consensus mechanism of said blockchains.
These changes resulted in updated Layer 1 theme classifications for 87 previously classified assets as a result of the quarterly review process. The updated classifications will be implemented on March 3, 2023.
Martin Howard, SVP of Index Research at Wilshire commented, “Quarterly reviews of the Digital Asset Taxonomy System ensure that the sector classification remains representative of this nascent and rapidly evolving asset class. By publishing the rules-based methodology we aim to bring the utmost transparency to classification so that institutions can make investment decisions based on trusted data.”
Doug Schwenk, CEO of Digital Asset Research (DAR) and Deputy Co-Chair of the Wilshire Digital Assets Advisory Group, commented, “We’re pleased to provide expanded coverage and additional thematic classifications, adding to the utility of DATS and continuing our commitment along with Wilshire to providing structure and standards to digital assets.”
How can investors use DATS in their investment management operations?
Traditional and digital-native asset owners, product issuers, custodians and research service provider scan license DATS for the same purposes as they would adopt an equity or fixed income classification system:
• Developing digital asset investment strategies and risk policies
• Issuing index-linked products based on sector-themed indexes
• Conducting performance attribution
• Constructing custom digital asset portfolios
The next review will be in April 2023. Visit www.wilshire.com/dats for more information and for the full DATS methodology.