After several delays and a demand for regulatory clarifications, the investment house specializing in digital assets, Silver Castel, completed the merger with the stock exchange skeleton ECB (ICB) and began trading on the stock exchange on Monday morning. This is after the final approval of the stock exchange for the merger was received and the company’s name will be changed to Silver Castel Holdings.
The start of trading in Silver Castel shares took place in the middle of a difficult day during which $ 130 billion of the value of cryptocurrencies worldwide was wiped out. Following the merger, Silver Castel’s existing shareholders hold 75% of the merged company’s shares.
Silver Castel Investment House was founded in 2018 by senior bankers and Israeli capital markets Zvi Ziv (former CEO of Bank Hapoalim who chairs the investment house), Gabi Ravid (one of the founders of Psagot Investment House), Eli Mizrah (former CEO of Golf Network Serving as CEO of Silver Castel), Chen Munitz, Rami Beinisch and Danny Zilbiger.
The investment house has a variety of products and services and it allows its clients convenient, easy and secure exposure to digital assets by active hedge funds that specialize in digital currencies. The company is also examining a number of other avenues, including Bitcoin-backed loans, R&D in advanced trading strategies and investment products for institutional clients.
Since its establishment in 2018, Silver Castel has accumulated losses of NIS 9 million, and in the first half of 2021 the loss amounted to NIS 2.15 million. The investment house’s revenues in the half amounted to only NIS 412,000, of which NIS 270,000 comes from margins in respect of the digital currency inventory, among other things due to the purchase of digital currencies in the amount of NIS 171,000. To this income must be added the success fee charged by the investment house from the performance of the hedge funds managed by it, which are calculated on an annual basis.
The investment house is facing regulatory restrictions from the Securities Authority, which has informed it that at present it can not allow the exposure of more than 25% of its investment products to digital assets, the main activity of Silver Castel. Eli Mizrah, CEO of Silver Castel, He said: “Digital assets in general and digital currencies in particular, have in the past year become an integral part of the asset portfolio of investment bodies and institutions in Israel and around the world. Trading on the stock exchange will allow many investors exposure to the trend of adoption of this field in Israel and around the world. “