Experts Favour Bitcoin ETF: Gold Being Unregulated Market & Institutional Investors Raises the Bar

Ran NeuNer of CNBC hosted a panel of experts to discuss SEC’s rejection of Winklevoss’ Bitcoin ETF and their views on the future of Bitcoin ETF. Institutional investors already being here and Gold being an unregulated market that has Gold ETFs are some of these opinions.

Institutional investors are already here, Bitcoin ETF not that important – Grayscale MD

Michael Sonnenshein, Managing Director of Grayscale Investment said that Hester Peirce had some crucial points in her letter which he too accepts. Speaking on the Bitcoin ETF, he states that the Bitcoin ETF is not that important as the noise around it is making it.

Taking his company as an example, he states that in 2018 they have raised 250 million dollars in new assets and about 56% of those assets are coming from institutional investors and so from his perspective, the crypto markets are actually seeing the institutional inflows despite the fact that there isn’t an ETF.  

Mark Brady, CEO Venture Smart, an ex-employee of Blackrock, the world leading ETF manager. Mark, commented that he doesn’t think that a Bitcoin ETF is really important to change the course of institutional money to cryptos as according to him the ETF is one piece of the ecosystem in which institutional investors invest.

According to him, there are still more important systematic pieces to the ecosystem that need to be put in place such as custody before true institutional investors will really participate in Bitcoin ETF.

Gold unregulated too, if gold ETFs approved so should be Bitcoin ETF – BitMEX CEO

Arthur Hayes, Co-Founder, and CEO, the second on the panel, believed that

“the SEC wants to keep people interested in the financial markets and if retail traders continue to ask for a particular product (Bitcoin ETF) at some point they’re going to have to approve one of them”.

Adding to Hester’s comments on unregulated markets, Arthur believes gold too is an unregulated market and a many times global investment banks have been accused of rigging these markets yet the SEC has allowed a Gold ETF which holds billions of dollars of retail money so how can they not allow Bitcoin ETF.

Also, read: Hester Peirce Hits Again says, SEC Focus Misplaced over Bitcoin ETF

VanEck has a great chance of approval but next year- eToro senior analyst

Finally, Mati Greenspan, Analyst at EToro voiced his opinion on VanEck ETF application by saying that

“the SEC was in no rush to approve the ETF and he believes that most likely they’re going to take their time and then which would mean that on August 10th will be a simple delay of the of judgment. I believe that by the time we get to by the time we get to Q1 of 2019 the market will be much more mature as we discussed previously there’s a lot of OTC desks that are coming online”

He believes that VanEck ETF has a great chance to get approved as it is aimed at institutional investors. The minimum contract size being 25 bitcoins is not a small amount at today’s prices that’s about $200,000 per contract and the fact that these ETFs are 100% insured is a very comforting thought for any financial regulator.

The Hester Peirce dissent and the opinion of leading analysts do throw a huge insight and a belief that a Bitcoin ETF will sooner or later be approved by SEC. Each of the does clearly state that Bitcoin ETF rejection is not the end of the world and it is not that big of an event for crypto prices as the media is blowing it.