Chicago's deep roots in options trading and market infrastructure are fast turning it into the epicenter of the next wave in crypto ETFs, said panelists at Benzinga Fintech Day & Awards 2025, featuring Quantify Funds CEO David Dziekanski, Kelly Intelligence founder Kevin Kelly, and Cyber Hornet ETF's Co-Founder Mike Willis. Together, the trio outlined how Chicago's financial DNA — options, execution tech, and advisory wealth management — is powering a bridge between traditional finance and the digital-asset frontier.
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Blending Bitcoin With Traditional Markets
Willis said Cyber Hornet’s S&P 500 and Bitcoin 75/25 Strategy ETF (NASDAQ:BBB) combines 75% S&P 500 exposure with 25% Bitcoin, designed for “the Bitcoin-curious” investor base among financial advisers. The idea, he noted, is to smooth the volatility that scares many wealth managers while still offering meaningful upside if Bitcoin rallies. The fund initially launched with Bitcoin futures to avoid custody risks, but plans to shift to spot holdings in its next update.
Monetizing Crypto Volatility With Options
Kelly, whose firm oversees the Amplify Bitcoin 2% Monthly Option Income ETF (BATS:BITY) and the Amplify Bitcoin Max Income Covered Call ETF (BATS:BAGY), cited option-writing strategies as one way advisers can generate steady income amid crypto’s nonstop turmoil. By systematically selling calls on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, his products are yielding 2% to 3% month in and month out—a way to transform crypto’s “omnipresent volatility at all times” into a dividend stream. When volatility rises, income rises, he insinuated, adding that the strategy has found a following among investors seeking alternatives to bonds for yield.
“We help monetize that volatility for two facets. We have two Bitcoin products (BITY and BAGY). One (facet), because we’re selling on the entire portfolio of Bitcoin, returning all of that volatility in the form of fiat essentially through monthly distributions. The other one is we’re selling on a portion to get 2% a month,” Kelly explained.
“The reason we do that is because if you look at historically volatility, let’s say for Bitcoin, is always ranged between 40 and 70. And so it does have macro risk that’s baked into it. People have had a hard time figuring out how to peg the volatility. And so we turn that into opportunity by doing monthly distributions on these products,” he added.
Stacking Returns: Quantify's Dual-Asset Strategy
Dziekanski outlined Quantify’s BTGD ETF, which “stacks” 100% Bitcoin exposure atop 100% gold – a leveraged “portable alpha” structure that captures the diversification benefits of two uncorrelated assets. Gold often cushions Bitcoin’s sharp drawdowns, he said, giving the strategy a smoother risk profile than single-asset crypto funds. Quantify plans to expand the model with new “income stack” ETFs combining Bitcoin, gold, equities and Treasuries.
“We stacked 100% Bitcoin on top of 100% gold. It’s a portable alpha approach. It’s not a new concept. PIMCO has been doing it since the 90s. They initially had their stock plus funds. You create a leverage ETF that’s less path-dependent because some of the onus that the allocator traditionally has in a leverage ETF in terms of rebalancing three or four days a week to stay in their leverage target, is embedded into the fund because we have two assets that are uncorrelated to rebalance in between,” Dziekanski explained.
“These two assets tend to, for example when Bitcoin has a 15% or greater drawdown, hold its uncorrelated benefits to Bitcoin. So gold is usually down somewhere between -4% and up high as 14% when Bitcoin has those 15% draw downs.”
The Bigger Picture
The panel concluded that the future of crypto adoption depends on ETF innovation that meets advisers where they are: regulated, yield-seeking, and risk-managed. As option traders and fintech builders from Chicago continue to lead that charge, the city is quietly reinventing itself as the Wall Street of crypto ETFs.
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Photo courtesy of Corynn Egreczky.
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