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Why Discipline Outperforms Discretion: The Case for Rule-Based Investing in Digital Assets

In financial markets, emotion is the invisible tax on performance. Even the most seasoned active managers can fall victim to optimism, fear, or short-term incentives, behaviors that collectively explain why, over long horizons, the vast majority of funds fail to beat their benchmarks.

 

An index, by contrast, doesn’t get emotional. It follows its rules.

 

That distinction lies at the heart of VIDA – Venionaire Index for Digital Assets and „VLONE“ (Venionaire Layer-1 Select Index), a rules-based benchmark engineered by Compass Financial Technologies and developed by our Web3 team at Venionaire Capital. VLONE captures the performance of leading Layer-1 blockchains – Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and many others, using transparent criteria such as liquidity, adoption metrics, network governance, and technological innovation.

 

Where an active crypto fund manager might chase narratives or overreact to market volatility, VLONE maintains structural discipline. Its quantitative methodology determines weights objectively and rebalances according to measurable fundamentals.

 

The result speaks for itself: VLONE has delivered strong cumulative returns through consistent methodology and zero human bias, as the time series of a few years of back testing shows.

 

For investors, investing in an index is more than efficiency, it’s psychological protection. By design, VLONE resists the emotional rollercoaster that undermines active decision-making in digital asset markets.

 

The recently lunched VLONE-based Decentralised Token Folio (DTF) by Reserve, a company trusted by top tier tech investors such as Peter Thiel and Sam Altman, extends this principle to an investable, on-chain structure, enabling exposure to the same disciplined framework through decentralised infrastructure.

 

In a market where sentiment swings faster than fundamentals, staying systematic isn’t just smart. It’s survival.

VLONE Outpaces Bitcoin: Why Diversification Matters in Digital Assets

In the world of digital assets, Bitcoin has long reigned supreme as the asset of choice for investors seeking exposure to the sector. Yet, recent performance metrics suggest that a broader approach, capturing the potential of multiple leading blockchains, may deliver superior results. Enter the Venionaire Layer-1 Select Index (VLONE), which has quietly outperformed Bitcoin over the past year while offering investors a diversified gateway into the most promising layer-1 ecosystems.


Performance Tells the Story

Over the twelve months to mid-September 2025, VLONE recorded an annualised return of more than 64%, compared to Bitcoin’s roughly 24% in the same period. This is not a marginal difference, it is a decisive outperformance that highlights the value of diversification within the blockchain economy.
Year-to-date, returns are more closely aligned—VLONE at 21.5% versus Bitcoin at 23.9%. But the trailing 12-month view underscores the real point: investors who limited themselves to Bitcoin left significant gains on the table.


The Price of Broader Exposure

Critics will point out that VLONE comes with higher volatility – 61% versus Bitcoin’s ~54%. This is true. But in financial markets, higher volatility is not inherently negative when it is accompanied by higher return. On a risk-adjusted basis, VLONE has rewarded investors with more return per unit of risk than Bitcoin over the past year.
The index achieves this by distributing exposure across a carefully selected basket of layer-1 blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana and other networks alongside Bitcoin itself. Each asset contributes differently across market cycles, smoothing out idiosyncratic risks while capturing growth beyond Bitcoin’s dominance.


Beyond Bitcoin: Capturing the Next Wave

Bitcoin remains the industry’s bellwether. Its liquidity, institutional adoption and market depth are unmatched. But innovation in blockchain does not stop with Bitcoin. Ethereum’s smart-contract ecosystem, Solana’s scaling breakthroughs, and other layer-1 projects are driving capital flows, developer activity and user adoption that increasingly define the future of the sector.
By allocating only around 15% to Bitcoin and distributing the balance across leading peers, VLONE ensures investors are not over-exposed to a single asset, no matter how dominant. This is not just diversification for its own sake, it is strategic positioning for the next wave of blockchain growth.


The Case for VLONE

For asset managers, wealth advisers and institutional investors, VLONE represents more than just another crypto product. It is:
  • A benchmark: the first BMR-regulated crypto index of its kind, listed on Bloomberg and Refinitiv, ensuring transparency and compliance.
  • A research-driven methodology: selection based on liquidity, adoption, and technological fundamentals, not hype.
  • A cost-efficient tool: enabling banks, brokers, and advisers to structure investment products that track a broad market benchmark rather than relying on single-asset exposure.
Bitcoin will always have its place in portfolios, it is the original, the most liquid, and the best understood. But in 2025, investors looking for real growth cannot ignore the performance of VLONE. By combining Bitcoin’s stability with the dynamism of other leading blockchains, VLONE has proven itself a smarter way to capture the upside of digital assets.
For investors, the message is clear: don’t just hold Bitcoin. Hold the future of blockchain. Invest in VLONE tracking products.


 

Learn more about VIDA and the VLONE Index:

Why Benchmarks Matter More Than Ever in Digital Assets

In traditional finance, benchmarks are the invisible backbone of global markets. From pension funds to ETFs, from structured products to private portfolios, benchmarks provide orientation, comparability, and trust. Indices like the S&P 500, the MSCI World, or the STOXX Europe 600 have become household names precisely because they serve as reliable yardsticks against which performance is measured.
Now, for the first time, Venionaire Capital is bringing this same benchmark logic into the world of digital assets. With the launch of the Venionaire Index for Digital Assets (VIDA), we introduce a family of indices that combine institutional quality, transparent methodology, and regulatory compliance (BMR) with the unique dynamics of blockchain-based markets.


Benchmarks: The Compass of Global Markets

Benchmarks have always played three essential roles in financial markets:
  1. Measuring Performance
    Without benchmarks, investors cannot objectively evaluate whether their money is working effectively. Did your fund manager truly deliver alpha, or did the market itself rise? A benchmark answers this question.
  2. Structuring Products
    The rise of ETFs and index-linked products is a testament to the power of benchmarks. Trillions of dollars are invested in funds tied to simple, transparent indices. These products are cost-efficient, scalable, and accessible.
  3. Building Trust
    Markets need standards. When an index is regulated, rules-based, and independently calculated, it creates the foundation for investor confidence. Benchmarks are not just financial tools, they are a source of stability.


The Success Story of Index Investing

The last two decades have witnessed a dramatic shift from active management to passive investing.
  • In 2000, active funds dominated, with index funds and ETFs representing only a fraction of global assets.
  • By 2020, passive funds had overtaken active funds in U.S. equities, managing more than half of the market’s assets.
  • Today, ETFs and index products are the fastest-growing segment in asset management globally.
Why? Because investors realized that most active funds fail to beat their benchmarks after fees. Index investing gave them a simpler, cheaper, and often more profitable alternative.


The Missing Benchmark in Digital Assets

While equities and bonds have long enjoyed the clarity of benchmarks, the digital asset space has been missing such a foundation. For years, crypto markets were dominated by speculative behavior, hype cycles, and opaque products.
The result? Investors had little ability to compare performance, assess risk, or gain diversified exposure in a transparent way.
This gap is what Venionaire set out to solve. The VIDA index family provides:
  • Research-driven methodologies that consider not only size but also quality factors.
  • Diversified exposure to the most promising Layer-1 blockchains.
  • BMR compliance for regulatory trust and institutional adoption.
  • Independent calculation through our partner Compass Financial Technologies.
With VIDA, digital assets now have their equivalent of the S&P 500 — a standard benchmark that can guide investment decisions and structure new products.


The First Step: VLONE – Venionaire Layer One Index

The first index in the VIDA family is VLONE, focusing on Layer-1 blockchains — the backbone of the blockchain economy.
VLONE is calculated and weighted based on:
  • Liquidity – ensuring investability and market depth.
  • Market Capitalization – reflecting economic relevance.
  • Technology Innovation – assessing long-term competitiveness.
  • Network Performance – capturing adoption and usage.
  • Governance Quality – ensuring sustainable growth and resilience.
This methodology ensures that the index is not simply a list of the largest tokens but a quality-driven selection of the most promising blockchains.


Why Benchmarks Matter for Institutions

For institutional investors, benchmarks are not optional, they are a prerequisite. Banks and wealth managers depend on them to evaluate fund performance and to design products that clients can easily understand. Advisors and brokers turn to indices as a basis for recommending diversified exposure rather than speculative bets. Exchanges and structured product providers, meanwhile, require benchmarks as both a legal and practical foundation for launching compliant investment vehicles.
By introducing VIDA, Venionaire opens the door for banks, advisors, and brokers to license and build products that bring digital assets into the mainstream of institutional finance.


From Chaos to Structure: The Maturity of Crypto Markets

The launch of VIDA is not happening in a vacuum. It is part of a broader trend: the institutionalization of crypto markets.
  • Regulation is catching up, with frameworks like MiCA in Europe setting standards for custody, issuance, and disclosure.
  • Infrastructure is maturing, with regulated custodians, exchanges, and trading venues.
  • Investor demand is shifting from speculative trading toward long-term, diversified exposure.
Benchmarks like VIDA accelerate this process by creating a common language and structure. Just as the S&P 500 helped transform equities into a mass market for investors, VIDA can help transform digital assets into a trusted, benchmark-driven asset class.


The Benchmark Revolution Comes to Digital Assets

The story of modern finance cannot be told without benchmarks. They measure, structure, and build trust — enabling trillions in capital flows.
Now, with VIDA, Venionaire Capital brings this benchmark logic into digital assets. The result is a family of indices that give institutions, advisors, and investors the clarity they have been waiting for.
The VLONE Index is just the beginning. Over time, more benchmarks will follow, each providing the building blocks for a professional, scalable, and efficient digital asset industry.


 

Learn more about VIDA and the VLONE Index:
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