Audio Commentary by Tim Seymour

Blockchain: Adoption Trends Are Accelerating BLOK was down 3.81% (NAV return) in the month of August, with YTD performance of positive 18.15% (see standardized performance). Long term adoption is challenging to measure in the face of near-term market volatility, but the evidence we bring you in this latest report shows a breakthrough in the insurance market as well as further adoption of Real World Assets (RWA) in the form of Stablecoins and broad “Active Addresses.”

COMMENTARY August has typically brought some seasonal weakness and increased volatility in the equity markets, which has been especially true over the last several years and turned out to be true this year too. Within the first several days of the month the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) reached an intraday high of more than 65, a near historic level that has only been surpassed twice; briefly during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and twice during the global financial crisis during 2008-2009. Thankfully, as quickly as volatility jumped and the corresponding equity market selloff arrived, markets found their footing and began to rebound with investors once again looking for cues from the Fed, corporate earnings and incoming economic data.

Audio Commentary by Tim Seymour

Audio Commentary by Tim Seymour

Chicago, September 27, 2024—Amplify ETFs announces September income distributions for its income ETFs.

Chicago, September 27, 2024—Amplify ETFs announces September income distributions for its income ETFs.

Audio Commentary by Tim Seymour

COMMENTARY Equity markets rolled over without hesitation as the calendar turned to September, historically one of the weakest months for equities. While not as extreme as the early August selloff, the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) pushed into the mid-20s and the S&P 500 slid more than 6% in the first 5 trading sessions as equities searched for a bottom and speculation of an emergency rate cut even began to swirl. Ultimately, it was economic data – nonfarm payrolls and CPI – that gave investors’ confidence that a 50 BPs (basis points)1 rate cut by the Fed was coming and that an economic soft landing may still be a possibility. Equities rallied into the Fed rate cut and never looked back, turning September into a green month for the first time since 2019.

Blockchain: Adoption Gains Momentum in 2024 As of September 30, 2024, BLOK’s NAV returns were up 6.25% for the 1 month, 5.79% for the Q3, and is up 25.53% YTD (see standardized performance). More importantly, the driver of these returns is evidence that real change is on the horizon. In September, at the Singapore 2049 Conference, Sergey Nazarov, the Co-founder of Chainlink, delivered an eye-opening keynote address that explained his idea of why adoption is at an intersection between TradFi and DeFi, which will ultimately lead to hundreds of trillions of value, measured by dollars and code. Note that many readers of this report likely have not heard of Sergey Nazarov or Chainlink, but in a changing world, innovation does not usually come from your next door neighbor. Chainlink, which he co-founded, is an industry platform standard that is powering and integrating the decentralized computing ecosystem referenced as DeFi. “Chainlink since 2022 has enabled over $15 trillion in cumulative transaction value by providing financial institutions, startups, and developers worldwide with access to real-world data, and offchain computations. It provides a base level of security and cross-chain interoperability across any blockchain.” Check out his full Token Singapore 2049 keynote speech1 as well as all of our footnotes links below.2