Eight years after the Winklevoss twins filed the first application for a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF), it began trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in the United States on Tuesday.
The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF fund launched under the ticker “BITO” and rose around 3% to $40.88 in early trading. The fund follows contracts, that is, contracts that speculate on the future price of bitcoin, rather than the cryptocurrency itself.
This means that investors in the ETF should be aware that both the price and the return of their securities will differ from the price of bitcoin itself. This is not ideal for those who take a long-term view of cryptocurrency and expect an ETF that follows physical bitcoin that investors can buy and hold.
the first premiere
Michael Sapir, CEO of ProShares, noted that the launch of the ETF is a milestone. “1993 is remembered for it, 2002 for the first bond ETF and 2004 for the first gold ETF. The year 2021 will be remembered for the first ETF linked to cryptocurrencies,” he said. The bitcoin price spiked briefly Tuesday morning after the start of trading, rising 3% to $63,035.04, according to Coin Metrics, nearing its April 14 all-time high of $64,899. Bitcoin futures rose around 2%.
New SEC Chairman Gary Gensler Opens the Box on a Potential Rush of ETFs
The cryptocurrency industry has been yearning for a bitcoin-related ETF for years. In around 2017, asset managers began calling for the launch of spot bitcoin ETFs, but their proposals were rejected by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (which argued that neither was able to demonstrate market resistance to the handling.
Facebook Comments
Disqus