Bitcoin ETF Could Be Approved in Time for Christmas, Says JP Morgan

JP Morgan analysts said that Wall Street may get a long-awaited Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) within months. 

In a Wednesday report, the top investment bank said it was “most likely” that a spot Bitcoin ETF could get approved before January 10. Analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence added said that there is a 90% chance a Bitcoin ETF will get approved in January. 

“Tk,” the report read. 

An ETF is an investment vehicle that tracks the value of an underlying asset, like gold, foreign currencies, or in this case, crypto.

A spot Bitcoin doesn’t yet exist in the States but would give investors exposure to cryptocurrency in a safe and easy way.

But the SEC has approved several Bitcoin futures ETFs, like Proshares’ Bitcoin Strategy ETF. There was huge interest in the products when they first launched, during a bull market, but since then, the interest in crypto futures ETFs has waned. Case in point: The ProShares fund, the first to win approval, trades on the NYSE Arca under the BITO ticker. It accumulated more than $1 billion in investment in its first two days, but hasn’t grown beyond the initial rush. It now has $902 million worth of assets under management.

Investors are hungry for a spot Bitcoin ETF, experts say, but the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has denied applications for such a product, mostly citing the potential for market manipulation as one of the main reasons. 

Now, though, analysts are more optimistic than ever before: BlackRock, world’s biggest fund manager, applied for a Bitcoin ETF of its own and fund manager Grayscale scored a victory against the SEC where a federal judge sided with the firm over its application to convert its flagship Bitcoin fund into an ETF. 

The SEC currently has a long-list of applications sitting on its desk to review from major Wall Street players, including VanEck, WisdomTree, and ARK Invest.