New Metaverse ETF Launches From Roundhill Investments: What Investors Should Know

Roundhill Investments is launching their latest pure-play ETF Wednesday, June 30, with an ETF covering the growing Metaverse market.

The ETF: Launching in partnership with Matthew Ball, Roundhill Investments announce the new Roundhill Ball Metaverse ETF META.

The ETF will be the first exchange-traded product to offer exposure to the growing Metaverse market.

“The Metaverse is broadly understood as a successor-state to today’s mobile internet, but which will involve countless interoperable and persistent virtual worlds, be richly integrated into the physical world as well, thereby creating a new medium and economy for work, leisure and innovation,” Roundhill Investments said.

The ETF will follow the Ball Metaverse Index, managed by a newly formed indexing and research firm led by Ball, a leading researcher on the Metaverse.

Related Link: Exclusive: Roundhill MVP First Pure-Play Sports ETF Offers Growth, SPACs, Exposure To NFTs

Why Metaverse: The ETF will give investors exposure to major categories of the Metaverse and the companies that get a strong share of the revenue from the industry.

“We consider the emergence of the Metaverse to be as transformative and valuable as the emergence of mobile internet and the fixed-line internet that preceded it,” Ball said. “It likely will touch every industry and profession, enlarging and/or disrupting today’s leaders, and leading to countless new companies and technologies.”

Bloomberg estimates the Metaverse market size at $800 billion, offering a significant opportunity for investors, Roundhill said.

“We are very excited to work with Matt and his team to offer META, a truly one-of-a-kind ETF that provides investors exposure to a basket of 50 companies that we believe are collectively positioned to drive the future of the internet,” Roundhill Investments CEO and co-founder Will Hershey said.

ETF Holdings: Among the companies included in the ETF will be GPU companies like NVIDIA, virtual platform providers like Tencent Holdings. ADR TCEHY and Roblox Corp RBLX, cloud computing services like Fastly Inc FSLY and gaming engines like Unity Software Inc U.

"Securities are included and weighted on the basis of their exposure to seven identified subcategories, including virtual world, payments and compute," Hershey told Benzinga.

Other members of the Metaverse Index Expert Council include:

• Jerry Heinz, VP of cybersecurity startup ActZero and formerly at NVIDIA Corporation NVDA, Tinder and Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN.
• Jacob Novak, co-founder and CEO of Genvid Technologies, formerly at Square Enix Holdings.
• Jesse Walden, managing partner of Variant Fund, formerly a partner at Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto fund.
• Jonathan Glick, former SVP at the New York Times Co NYT.
• Anna Sweet, CEO of Bad Robot Games, formerly Facebook Inc FB Oculus and Valve. 
• Imran Sarwar, co-producer of Grand Theft Auto V, Grand Theft Auto Online and Red Dead Redemption 2 with Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc TTWO. 

Other Roundhill ETFs: The pure-play Metaverse ETF comes from Roundhill Investments, a firm that has launched several first to market pure-play ETFs with sector focuses.

Other ETFs from Roundhill include the Roundhill BITKRAFT Esports & Digital Entertainment ETF NERD, Roundhill Streaming Services & Technology ETF SUBZ, Roundhill Sports Betting & iGaming ETF BETZ and Roundhill MVP ETF MVP.

Shares of NERD are up 127% in the last year and the ETF is nearing $100 million in assets under management, according to the company’s website.

Shares of BETZ are up 100% since launching in June 2020 and the ETF has over $420 million in assets under management.

SUBZ launched in February 2021 and has $37 million in assets. MVP launched in March 2021 and has nearly $10 million in assets under management.

"Thematic ETFs allow for investors to express specific industry or thematic views without taking on idiosyncratic risk. Purity of theme is therefore critical — investors don't want to get the thesis right but the returns wrong," Hershey told Benzinga. 

Roundhill plans on launching more pure-play ETFs in the future with Hershey telling Benzinga there are "a few in the works right now."