The American stock exchange regulator SEC will allow the offering of a new bitcoin investment product. The organization announced this on Wednesday evening. This is a so-called bitcoin ETF: an investment product that allows investors to speculate on the price of a share without having to buy it themselves.
This is attractive for the group of investors who are willing to speculate on bitcoin, but find it too risky to own the sometimes volatile cryptocurrency themselves. Asset managers who offer the ETFs then own the bitcoins themselves.
Bitcoin proponents and crypto investors have been closely watching the SEC’s every step in approving or disapproving the asset managers’ application to issue the ETFs in recent days. In addition to being an investment opportunity, allowing bitcoin ETFs is also a controversial institutionalization of bitcoin.
It means that bitcoin has become somewhat more part of the mainstream financial system that many cryptocurrency proponents shun.
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