Synthetic Stocks

Mirror Protocol has added an S&P 500 synthetic asset to its platform, giving investors access to a crypto token that is tied to the performance of the stock market.

Mirror Protocol Adds Index Fund

The S&P 500 is a commonly-followed index of the 500 largest publicly traded companies in the United States. It includes many blue chip technology equities including Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Tesla, and several others. At press time, the index had a one-year return of 63.27%, according to S&P Global.

Mirror Protocol’s mSPY token represents a synthetic version of the S&P 500, meaning that it is a cryptocurrency token with a value that follows the performance of the stock market.

Users can stake, mint, or trade mSPY. To mint, users must have either TerraUSD (UST) or other Mirror Protocol assets in their wallet. Currently, the collateral ratio is set at 130%. To avoid liquidation, the protocol suggests users to set the collateral ratio at 180%.

Users can also opt to provide liquidity to the mSPY-UST pool and earn a 150% APY return on their investment. At press time, this pool had assets worth 2.95 million UST staked.

Additionally, users can buy or sell mSPY for UST on the platform.

The Rise of Synthetic Assets

Synthetic assets—crypto tokens tied to the performance other assets—have been rapidly growing in popularity.

Two protocols are particularly notable. On Jan. 6, Injective Protocol added support for Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google stocks. Elsewhere, on Feb. 11, the Synthetix community voted in favor of adding synthetic variants of Tesla stock to its platform.

Mirror Protocol itself offers synthetic variants of Tesla, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, and more.

The author did not hold any cryptocurrencies mentioned in this article at the time of press.