VanEck has received regulatory approval to launch its bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund (ETF) next week, a post-effective filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) shows. The company is the latest in joining the bitcoin-linked ETF race in the U.S. with the green light to compete with ProShares’ offering, which started trading yesterday.
The VanEck Bitcoin Strategy ETF has been given permission by the SEC to begin trading after Saturday, October 23, under the ticker “XBTF,” meaning the fund will most likely go live on Monday, October 25, the first day of market open next week.
“The Fund is an actively managed exchange-traded fund that seeks to achieve its investment objective by investing, under normal circumstances, in standardized, cash-settled bitcoin futures contracts traded on commodity exchanges registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (’CFTC’), such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (the ‘CME’),” per the filing. “The Fund does not invest in bitcoin or other digital assets directly.”
The SEC allowed the first ETF linked to bitcoin to go live in the U.S. yesterday. The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF debuted on Tuesday and amassed over $1 billion in trading volume, becoming the second largest ETF launch in the history of U.S. markets.
Although neither the VanEck ETF nor the ProShares ETF will hold actual BTC, they seek to provide interested investors with bitcoin exposure through futures contracts. An ETF seeks to make it easier for retail and institutional investors to obtain exposure to the underlying asset without having to buy and custody it themselves.
However, that does introduce some tradeoffs which investors should be aware of. First, it means that those purchasing bitcoin futures ETF shares will not be able to hold actual BTC. This may seem like a nuance for some investors but is crucial in the long term if Bitcoin is to fulfill its destiny in displacing the current financial system.
