In the past few months there has been a lot of ooh's and oof's surrounding the impending decision of SEC approved Bitcoin ETF. The whole stance started back in 2017 when the Winklevoss twins submitted a Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust ETF (COIN) to SEC only to face rejection. Since then, SEC has been swamped with a number of bitcoin ETF's- only to reject each of these proposals.
So first things first- What is a bitcoin ETF?
ETF stands for 'Exchange Traded Fund'- describing an investment that tracks the price of an asset (in this case Bitcoin). The asset (Bitcoin) can be traded on exchanges just like our conventional stocks. 'Bitcoin ETF' would mean trading of bitcoin without the hassle of actually buying or selling it. This means that you would be holding Bitcoin ETF in your portfolio and this ETF tracks the real time price of Bitcoin. This opens up as a huge investment option for those who want to invest in bitcoin but don't need the struggle of keeping their private keys safe.
The next question which springs up is that why are these cryptocurrency proponents so keen on having a bitcoin approved ETF by SEC?
Well, primarily it will open up swarm of people who want to invest in Bitcoin without actually worrying about storing of bitcoins. The ease of purchasing a Bitcoin ETF would bring people with deep pockets who were previously not able to purchase bitcoins.
Secondly, ofcourse the ETF would shoot up the prices of cryptocurrency with a whole lot of attention and people rushing to buy 'Bitcoin Asset'. A similar situation also happened in early 2000's when ETF market opened up gold investing to private investors and the price of gold subsequently experienced a tremendous rally that peaked in 2011. If a bitcoin ETF is approved by SEC, the market will see an exponential steep in the prices of bitcoin.
The Present Scenario!
It is true that SEC has rejected number of different proposals in regards to Bitcoin ETF. However they are also gaining some major tractions on an upcoming ETF proposal. Cboe, which has filed for an application for Bitcoin based ETF with SEC has gained a lot of attraction. According to a recent report, the SEC office received a large swathe of opinion letters from more than 90 individuals. The number of responses sent was 10X more than the amount of opinions received in April 2017 for another Bitcoin ETF. The figures show that a lot of keen investors are waiting up on the decision of SEC on bitcoin ETF. Time will show us the results!
Data References:
https://u.today/what-is-bitcoin-etf-how-to-invest-in-btc-etf
https://www.bitcoinmarketjournal.com/bitcoin-etf/
https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-etf-decision-gets-an-overwhelming-amount-of-public-opinion/
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