On Friday (October 15), the Bitcoin price broke above the $62,000 for the first time in six months after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accepted the registration request for ProShares’ Bitcoin futures ETF.
Although within the crypto community it was widely expected that we would see one or more Bitcoin ETFs get approved next week, one of the first people to discover that the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF had been greenlit by the SEC was Bloomberg Intelligence ETF Analyst James Seyffart, who tweeted around 13:54 UTC yesterday that information about this ETF (ticker: NITO) was being added to the Bloomberg Terminal and also pointed out that Valkyrie Investments (which disclosed its plans for a Bitcoin futures ETF in August) had filed a form 8A with the SEC; this form must be submitted before securities can be offered on an exchange.
Around one and half hours later, according to data by TradingView, on crypto exchange Bitstamp, the Bitcoin price, which was at that time trading around $59,700 starting surging toward the $60,000 level and beyond, and by 20:24 UTC (on October 15), the $BTC price had reached $62,676, which was yesterday’s intraday high and just $888 shy of Bitcoin’s all-time high ($63,564), which was recorded on April 13.
Currently (as of 09:30 UTC on October 16), Bitcoin is trading around $61,532, which means that in the past one-month period, BTC-USD is up 28.29%.
As noted by CoinDesk, yesterday, ProShares filed a post-effective amended prospectus that states its Bitcoin Strategy ETF should launch on October 18, although trading of shares of this fund may not start until later next week.
According to a report published by CNBC yesterday, NYSE Arca, which is the top U.S. exchange for the listing and trading of ETFs, will “allow investors to trade the funds as allowed under federal law without SEC intervention.” It also mentioned that “a person familiar with the SEC’s decision-making clarified that the ETF will be allowed to begin trading next week, barring any last minute complaint from the regulator.”
Athanasios Psarofagis, who is another ETF analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence, said that we could soon see broad commodity indexes/ETFs, such as WisdomTree Enhanced Commodity Strategy Fund (NYSEARCA: GCC), start adding allocation to Bitcoin futures, and interestingly, a few minutes later, his collegaue pointed out that the aforementioned ETF had decided to allocate 5% to Bitcoin futures ETFs.
Finally, another Bitcoin futures ETF expected to launch (and start trading) next week is Inveso’s Bitcoin Strategy ETF.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.
Image Credit
Featured Image by “Donbrandon” via Pixabay
