While expectations regarding the approval of a bitcoin (BTC) futures exchange-traded fund (ETF) is currently rising, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has finally approved another type of bitcoin ETF for the first time.
The SEC approved the “Volt Crypto Industry Revolution and Tech ETF” last week. This means that there is now finally a publicly traded fund for American institutional investors with direct exposure to bitcoin.
This ETF tracks the price of “Bitcoin Industry Revolution Companies.” These are companies that have a large amount of their net assets in bitcoin, such as MicroStrategy, if not a large part of their revenues from bitcoin transactions, mining or loans.
80% of the fund consists of such companies, according to the application. The other 20% consists of more regular stocks to reduce the risk. The fund therefore does not hold cryptocurrencies directly fixed. So this is not a fully physically supported bitcoin ETF that the (American) market has been waiting for for years.
It is the first crypto-listed fund in the US market that comes closest to such a product. The new ETF will be launched on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Arca under the ticker BTCR.
The SEC again delayed its decision on four bitcoin ETFs last week; those of Valyrie, Kryptoin, GlobalX and WisdomTree. The next deadlines are in December. Due to recent statements by SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, the market expects the likelihood of a bitcoin futures ETF to be higher.
There are now more than a dozen applications for a bitcoin futures ETF on the table with the SEC. There is speculation in the market that the SEC may be able to approve one or more by the end of this month. ETF Analyst Eric Balchanus and James Seyffart of Bloomberg estimate the likelihood of approval as follows:
Gonna start a thread laying out a case as to why @EricBalchunas and I are putting odds at 75% for a Bitcoin Futures ETF coming to the U.S in October. Here’s where we view the odds of the ETF getting first approval 1/x pic.twitter.com/LRrzG9XLX1
— James Seyffart (@JSeyff) October 8, 2021
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