At least six Bitcoin ETF applications have been submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission, including from heavyweights like Fidelity.
The SEC statement, released late on Tuesday, was mostly focused on mutual funds and whether they should offer investors exposure to Bitcoin futures.
BlackRock disclosed in March that as of the end of January the BlackRock Global Allocation Fund held $6.5 million worth of Bitcoin futures, which made up just 0.0014% of its portfolio.
And the staff wouldn’t be making the decision on whether an ETF could trade anyway — that would be up to the commissioners themselves.
People in the industry who were “reading the tea leaves” had been convinced “that 2021 might be the year for a Bitcoin ETF to be approved and then ultimately begin trading,” Todd Rosenbluth, director of mutual and exchange-traded fund research at CFRA Research, said in an interview.
“The statement does seem to confirm my opinion that a Bitcoin ETF is still a long way off in the U.S.,” he wrote.
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