The wait for the approval of an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that trades bitcoin directly, known as a spot bitcoin ETF, may be over as soon as next Wednesday.
According to a report in Fox Business, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager and one of the firms vying to bring a spot bitcoin ETF to market, expects its application to be approved next Wednesday.
BlackRock is one of several firms which submitted updated 19b-4 filings on Friday for proposed spot bitcoin ETFs, alongside Grayscale Investments, Valkyrie, ARK 21Shares and Invesco. The Cboe BZX exchange also filed forms for VanEck, WisdomTree, Pando Asset AG and Franklin Templeton last week.
The approval of spot bitcoin ETFs is greatly anticipated by crypto proponents, who wager that the funds could bring billions in fresh funding into the cryptocurrency sector. The price of bitcoin has skyrocketed in recent months, signaling the market’s enthusiasm for the prospect of exchange-traded products that hold bitcoin, rather than merely speculate on the price through futures contracts.
Crypto skeptics, meanwhile, have argued that Bitcoin is too volatile and unregulated to support a healthy market. In a letter to the SEC, non-partisan nonprofit Better Markets, which lobbies for increased financial regulation, said that approving the spot bitcoin ETFs would be “a regulatory mistake of historic proportions.”
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