Bitcoin broke the $60,000 price barrier on Saturday for the first time since April. This price movement could be attributed to the expectation that The SEC would approve a Bitcoin futures exchange traded fund. That exclamation became a reality on Monday.
ProShares, an exchange trading firm, will list an ETF which tracks Bitcoin futures at the New York Stock Exchange. According to the company, it will be listed as ‘BITO’.
ProShares CEO Michael Sapir stated that BITO will allow investors to have exposure to bitcoin.
Bitcoin is at $61,910 as of the writing of this article, just below the record high of $64,800 reached on April 14.
The cryptocurrency has had a turbulent year. Bitcoin’s price shot up to $60,000 in April after it surged from $12,000 at the start of September to more than $60,000 by the end. The price dropped significantly in May due to a wave of bad news. This included Elon Musk’s withdrawal from his blanket support for Bitcoin and crackdown on cryptocurrency services within China. Bitcoin briefly dropped below $30,000.
Futures are contracts that require investors to purchase or sell a commodity at a specific price by a specified date. You could, for example, commit to purchasing 1 Bitcoin at $100,000 per year.
You would have made money if the Bitcoin price on that date was $200,000 You would have lost money if the Bitcoin price on that date was $50,000
Futures ETFs are notably different than standard exchange-traded funds, something that Bitcoin enthusiasts have long advocated for. An ETF gives investors exposure to an underlying asset (in this case Bitcoin), while a Futures ETF lets investors speculate on the price of the asset. In the past, policymakers stated that cryptocurrencies are too susceptible to manipulation and fraud to be approved by ETFs backed with actual Bitcoins.
However, the SEC’s integration of cryptocurrencies into its framework will undoubtedly help Bitcoin and other currencies. Bitcoin’s price has risen 8% since last week. Ethereum is the most popular cryptocurrency is up 6.5% compared to a week ago.