<\/p>\n
The US Securities and Exchange Commission has seen a surge in crypto ETF proposals from fund issuers, drawing significant attention. But the importance of the funds, and the potential market moves they could spur, go beyond just headlines, industry executives told Blockworks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While spot bitcoin ETFs could bolster the asset\u2019s adoption among newer investors, as well as BTC\u2019s price and liquidity, ether futures ETFs \u2014 perhaps set to launch first \u2014 could lower bitcoin dominance and drive outperformance for a range of tokens.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A new wave of spot bitcoin ETFs commenced when BlackRock revealed plans<\/a> to launch such a product for the first time. Ark Invest and 21Shares had re-filed for a similar product roughly two months prior.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong> Did BlackRock have inside info on bitcoin ETF? Bitwise CIO says probably not<\/a><\/p>\n Then, Volatility Shares<\/a>, at the end of July, kicked off what ended up being a surge of filings for ETFs<\/a> that would hold ether futures contracts.\u00a0<\/p>\n After roughly 10 years of attempts by fund groups to launch a spot bitcoin ETF, the SEC has never permitted one to come to market. Plans for an Ether futures ETF, submitted to the regulator in May, were paused. At the time, sources informed Blockworks<\/a> that the regulator had requested this halt.\u00a0<\/p>\n Earlier this month, sources indicated that the SEC<\/a> is now ready to consider ether futures ETFs. Volatility Shares noted last week it intends to list its ether futures ETF on Oct. 12, though the SEC could still reject the proposal.\u00a0<\/p>\n The SEC, meanwhile, could take until early 2024 before ruling on the proposed spot bitcoin ETFs.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Bakkt CEO Gavin Michael told Blockworks that potential spot bitcoin ETF approval \u201cpoints to a breath of new life in the industry, and adoption of crypto from investors that had not yet had exposure to the asset class before.\u201d<\/p>\n Assets under management in ETFs was $9.6 trillion in 2022, according to Statista. In addition to being readily available to retail investors on brokerage platforms, ETFs are a preferred tool of financial advisers.\u00a0<\/p>\n A June survey<\/a> by the Journal of Financial Planning and the Financial Planning Association found that more than 90% of advisers use or recommend ETFs.<\/p>\n That preference is reflected in adviser attitudes toward crypto, as an April 2022 survey by Nasdaq found that 72% of financial advisers would be more likely to invest client assets in the segment if a spot bitcoin ETF were offered in the US. Similarly, 32% of financial professionals cited \u201clack of easily accessible investment vehicles like ETFs and mutual funds\u201d as a barrier to crypto allocation, according to a January report<\/a> by Bitwise and VettaFi.<\/p>\n Michael noted that plans by a company such as BlackRock to launch a bitcoin ETF \u201cact as a stamp of institutional approval to new investment and growth.\u201d<\/p>\n BlackRock<\/a> \u2014 with more than $9 trillion in assets under management \u2014 is in a position to offer \u201cunparalleled distribution\u201d for its spot bitcoin ETF, if approved, according to Seth Ginns, head of liquid investments at CoinFund.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt also continues the trend of opening up new and easier avenues for institutions to own crypto,\u201d Ginns told Blockworks. \u201cAny fund that can own equities can own the bitcoin spot ETF, and it fits more easily into traditional financial plumbing.\u201d<\/p>\n Nearly a dozen firms vying for a spot bitcoin ETF collectively manage around $15 trillion in assets, according to Ruslan Lienkha, the markets chief at Swiss fintech platform YouHodler. Even a tiny portion of this capital shifting to a bitcoin ETF could translate to tens of billions of dollars.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong> An approved spot bitcoin ETF could be \u2018one of the largest launches in history\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThus an ETF approval can boost the price of BTC initially, and then make it more stable and less volatile over time,\u201d Lienkha said in a statement. \u201cBasically, we will see much more liquidity in order books at the main trading venues.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n During a webinar earlier this month, Matt Hougan, chief investment officer of prospective spot bitcoin ETF issuer Bitwise, predicted that a US spot bitcoin ETF could attract $55 billion in net flows in its first five years on the market.<\/p>\n As for ether futures ETFs, Ginns said those products hitting the market could set ETH<\/a> on a new trajectory, the way bitcoin futures ETFs did, in part, for BTC.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bitcoin hit its all-time high price of roughly $69,000 in November 2021 about a month after the launch of the first bitcoin futures ETFs.\u00a0<\/p>\n While BTC\u2019s price is up about 56% so far in 2023, the price of ETH has increased roughly 37% since the start of the year. The market cap of Bitcoin (BTC<\/a>) was at $505 billion early Friday afternoon, representing a bitcoin dominance of 46.4%, according to CoinGecko. ETH\u2019s market cap stood at about $198 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEther has lagged bitcoin [year to date] and this could be a catalyst for that to reverse, especially given this year\u2019s meaningful technical upgrades,\u201d Ginns said. \u201cWe\u2019d expect bitcoin dominance to continue to come down on an ether futures ETF approval, meaning a broad group of tokens should see outperformance.\u201d<\/p>\n The CoinFund executive added that he expects \u201cfundamentally driven tokens\u201d to show strong performance as builders continue to build \u2014 and as new launches such as Coinbase\u2019s layer-2 network, Base, and decentralized social network Friend.tech<\/a> are seeing good engagement.<\/p>\n Ginns said: \u201cIf the ETF approvals drive that risk-on, dominance declining environment\u2026we could see big token moves.\u201d<\/p>\n Get the day\u2019s top crypto news and insights delivered to your email every evening.\u00a0Subscribe to Blockworks\u2019 free newsletter<\/a>\u00a0now.<\/strong><\/p>\n Want alpha sent directly to your inbox? Get degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance, can\u2019t-miss tweets and more from\u00a0Blockworks Research\u2019s Daily Debrief<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Can\u2019t wait? Get our news the fastest way possible.\u00a0Join us on Telegram<\/a>\u00a0and follow us on\u00a0Google News<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The US Securities and Exchange Commission has seen a surge in crypto ETF proposals from fund issuers, drawing significant attention. But the importance of the funds, and the potential market moves they could spur, go beyond just headlines, industry executives told Blockworks.\u00a0 While spot bitcoin ETFs could bolster the asset\u2019s adoption among newer investors, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[230,225,221,227,226,228,229,60,223,224,222],"class_list":["post-142602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency","tag-brave","tag-coinbase","tag-crypto","tag-decentralised","tag-decentralized","tag-decentralized-exchange","tag-erc-20","tag-featured","tag-meme-coin","tag-robinhood","tag-solana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142602"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146588,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142602\/revisions\/146588"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The impact of spot BTC funds, if approved<\/h2>\n
Ether futures funds could spur \u2018big token moves\u2019<\/h2>\n
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