The Digital Asset Taxonomy System now classifies 1,301 assets, offering the broadest coverage on the market
London, Santa Monica, and New York, August 15, 2022 – 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 119 additional assets have been classified and added to the Digital Asset Taxonomy System (DATS) as a result of its rule-based quarterly review process.
DATS now classifies 1,301 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 119 digital assets at the July review follows a turbulent trading period over the last two quarters which resulted in significant changes to the market capitalization of many digital assets.
There were subsector classification changes for three existing digital assets as a result of the quarterly review process in July. These changes were implemented on August 15, 2022
| Ticker | Asset Name | Supersector | Sector | Old Subsector | New Subsector |
| AXS | Axie Infinity | Computation Platforms | Application Tokens | Digital Art, Collectibles & Non-Fungible Tokens | Video Games |
| GMT | STEPN | Computation Platforms | Application Tokens | Gift Cards, Rebates and Coupons | Digital Art, Collectibles & Non-Fungible Tokens |
| SYN | Synapse | Computation Platforms | Protocol Interoperability | DAO Governance Shares | Atomic Swap Solutions |
Source: Digital Asset Research, July 2022
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 “In addition to the continuous research process that gives us the inputs to classify digital assets, the insights shared by the Wilshire Digital Assets Advisory Group are incredibly valuable and important in maintaining an objective, robust governance structure and the development of DATS.”
How can investors use DATS in their investment management operations?
Traditional and digital-native asset owners, product issuers, custodians and research service providers can license the (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 October 2022. Visit www.wilshire.com/dats for more information and for the full DATS methodology.