Speaking with Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Christoforous, Managing Editor of ETF.com, Cinthia Murphy, discussed crypto themes in the exchange-traded fund (ETF) space.
When asked whether she thought a Bitcoin futures ETF was going to happen sooner rather than later, Murphy believes “the clock is ticking.” A Bitcoin ETF is already available in other countries, including Canada, but investors have been waiting for one to arrive on the US market for a long time.
However, Murphy noted that the SEC had demonstrated a readiness to talk about at least a futures-based Bitcoin ETF. Whatsmore, she highlighted that there are several other ETFs in the registration process that are awaiting final clearance. As for some of them, the SEC is scheduled to respond by the end of this month.
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Murphy confirmed:
“So it could be that by the end of September, we have a futures-based Bitcoin ETF approved, which would unleash a whole roster of them that are already in registration coming to market.”
In theory Chicago offers Bitcoin futures trading
The Managing Editor also illustrated that the Chicago Exchange currently offers Bitcoin futures trading in principle and has done so for a couple of years now. Therefore, the argument that there isn’t enough regulation or monitoring does not carry much weight. To this point, she argued:
“All these concerns we have about crypto, the futures contracts exist. And they trade every day, and they’re liquid, and they’re working. So it’d be kind of really interesting to see whether the SEC has no choice but to say yes and see what happens. And we’ll see what that does to the market.”
With regards to investors having exposure to cryptocurrency in the ETF space, Murphy mentioned:
“For a long time, blockchain ETFs have been kind of like an indirect vector to play the crypto space in the absence of just going out, flat-out buying you Bitcoin. And they have attracted a lot of assets. They’ve done really well.”
As a result of investing in blockchain ETFs, Murphy considers that you are essentially investing in the technology underpinning crypto. For example, investors in the BLOK ETF have direct exposure to crypto because it owns three Bitcoin ETFs.
Consequently, via an ETF, investors are able to gain access to the market who are not comfortable buying Bitcoin directly and putting it into their account.
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