Last month, BlackRock Inc., the world’s biggest money manager, asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to approve a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund — a fund that would invest in the digital currency directly rather than through futures markets. BlackRock joins tens of other smaller ETF providers with the same request, so far without success. But with BlackRock’s heft behind growing demands for a spot Bitcoin fund, it’s only a matter of time before the SEC relents.
And it should. A spot ETF would allow investors to buy, sell and hold Bitcoin more easily, cheaply and securely than they can today. In a crypto industry awash with scams, regulatory oversight would also give investors and money managers confidence that they’re buying a bona fide financial product, particularly if it has BlackRock’s name on it.
