The wait is over. The first U.S. bitcoin-focused exchange-traded fund (ETF) has officially listed on the New York Stock Exchange earlier this week, reaching $1 billion in trading volume in the after hours of its first day of trading.
The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (NYSE: BITO) tracks CME bitcoin futures, or contracts speculation on the future price of the token, rather than the value of the cryptocurrency itself. That means that investors into the fund should expect the price and the performance of the ETF to differ from the spot price of the token.
By the end of its first day of trading, ProShares reported that they had ended trading with $570 million in assets. The fund has an expense ratio of 0.95%.
The fund's launch also boosted the price of bitcoin itself, with the token jumping more than 4% Tuesday to $64,206.51, according to Coin Metrics, which was about 1% from it's all-time high set back in April. Bitcoin futures also increased by about 4%.
While the news is overall positive for the growing cryptocurrency industry, existing crypto investors may not see it as a way to invest indirectly into the token; many had hoped for an ETF that tracks the spot price of physical bitcoin that they could buy and hold. Investor have had many ways to get indirect exposure to bitcoin without owning it before the launch of BITO, including through financial apps like PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) and Square's (NYSE: SQ) CashApp, or crypto-related stocks like Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN).
"The launch of the first bitcoin-linked ETF in the U.S. will bolster the broader crypto market and help an entirely new investor class experience the benefits of bitcoin as a legitimate asset," said Anthony Bertolino, VP of growth at iTrustCapital, quoted by CNBC. "However, a derivatives-based bitcoin ETF is not where we want to be long-term. One of the most attractive aspects of bitcoin is that its a bearer asset with a highly liquid 24/7 spot market. Investors will almost certainly come to desire a spot based, physically backed bitcoin ETF and 10 years from now, I would even expect some of the bitcoin ETFs to allow physical redemption for those that want it."
The cryptocurrency industry has been pushing for a bitcoin ETF for years now, with asset managers starting to apply to launch spot bitcoin ETFs back in 2017. However, those efforts were rejected by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which ruled that no bitcoin ETF proposal was able to prove market resistance to manipulation.