Michael Sapir, Bitcoin’s ETF Front-Runner
ProShares introduced the first one in October, and investors piled more than $1 billion into it in two days, the fastest that any exchange-traded fund has reached the milestone.
Michael Sapir
Source: Washington Post/Getty ImagesThe first application for a Bitcoin ETF was filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2013 by the tech and crypto entrepreneurs Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. But regulators had too many concerns about volatility, price manipulation, and liquidity to bless it, even as similar products traded in Europe and Canada in ensuing years.
Those worries appear to have faded in light of a new approach and a new SEC chairman. Sapir’s ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF tracks Bitcoin futures instead of holding the cryptocurrency itself, as the Winklevii (and others) once proposed, allowing it to trade under the same rules that mutual funds follow and thereby offer investors greater protections.