Traditional financial firms finally believe that digital assets are here to stay. Or so one might conclude from the slew of announcements last week from some of the world’s premiere financial players.
Among them is BlackRock — the world’s largest asset manager with $9 trillion in assets under management (AUM) — filed for permission to build a “spot market” Bitcoin-based exchange-traded fund (ETF) — something the United States Securities and Exchange Commission has resolutely resisted.
Others include Fidelity Investments, Charles Schwab and Citadel launching EDX, a new cryptocurrency exchange. In Germany, Deutsche Bank — boasting $1.4 trillion in balance sheet assets — applied for a license to custody crypto. There were others too.
Collectively, these developments boosted crypto trading markets. Bitcoin (BTC) gained 20% in the week, surpassing the $30,000 mark for the first time since April. If allowed, a BlackRock Bitcoin ETF listing on the Nasdaq stock exchange would arguably make Bitcoin more accessible to a larger investing public.
Some even anticipated a stampede to Bitcoin due to the BlackRock filing, as others followed with their own, including Invesco and WisdomTree. Fidelity Investments filed for a spot Bitcoin ETF on June 29.
“The Great Accumulation has begun,” declared Cameron Winklevoss on Twitter, while MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor added, “The window to front-run institutional demand for #Bitcoin is closing.”
The Great Accumulation of bitcoin has begun. Anyone watching the flurry of ETF filings understands the window to purchase pre-IPO bitcoin before ETFs go live and open the floodgates is closing fast. If bitcoin was the most obvious and best investment of the previous decade, this…
— Cameron Winklevoss (@cameron) June 21, 2023
Others professed little shock about these developments, however, even after a year of crypto-related scandals, bankruptcies, lawsuits and regulatory uncertainty in the United States. By this view, the institutions were just bowing to the inevitable.
“I’m not surprised, since from a fundamental point of view, the movement of digital value is the next obvious evolution of the internet,” Jim Kyung-Soo Liew, associate professor of finance at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, told Cointelegraph. “What is surprising is how the U.S. hasn’t embraced it.”
Last week’s events raise some questions: How enduring are Bitcoin’s most recent price gains? There have been institutional…
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