BTC Up 6% Above $49K, Fidelity Director Calls It Digital Gold, CBOE Applies for Bitcoin ETF

In a strong crypto market recovery, Bitcoin (BTC) has surged 6% today making its way to above $49,000 levels. At press time, BTC is trading at a price of $49,147 with a market cap of $916 billion.

On Monday, March 1, Jurrien Timmer, Fidelity’s Director of Global Macro has recently released his new paper “Understanding Bitcoin” wherein he talks about the evolving global economic conditions since World War 2 and how hedge assets like Gold and Bitcoin (BTC) have found their place in the global macroeconomic conditions.

Interestingly, Timmer goes to touch upon the Stock-to-Flow (S2F) model by PlanB that determines the BTC price movement based on the model that “simply measures the number of years (flow) needed to replace the current supply (stock)”.

In a time when central banks are printing massive money to support the global economy, Timmer states that “Bitcoin: In my view, bitcoin has evolved to the point that it could be treated as a form of digital gold…a possible counterweight to future monetary inflation”.

“Like gold, bitcoin is scarce, but unlike gold, bitcoin cannot be touched, seen, or felt. Moreover, bitcoin is a brand-new asset that may be at risk of future regulation; indeed, both the U.S. Treasury and the IRS have been paying more attention lately. Uncertainty regarding policy-driven restrictions could affect demand.

But bitcoin may have a unique advantage over gold: Bitcoin supply, by design, is finite. We know that bitcoin’s supply growth is flattening. Note how the production of gold has been quite steady throughout the years: No asymptote here!”

Talking about the institutional adoption of Bitcoin, Timmer adds that Bitcoin (BTC) has already gone mainstream and considered a legitimate asset class by many investors. He further adds that Bitcoin is gaining credibility “as a digital analog of gold but with greater convexity”. Although one-tenth in size as compared to Gold, Timmer still believes that BTC will gain more market share than Gold in the future.

CBOE Files for Bitcoin ETF

After being the first ones in the market to launch the Bitcoin Futures back in December 2017, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) has officially filed form 19b-4 with the U.S. SEC to list and trade shares of the VanEck Bitcoin exchange-traded-fund (ETF).

The securities regulator has already acknowledged that it is reviewing the application. The SEC will take 45 days time period to either approve/disapprove or further extend the review period. The maximum tension period is pegged at 240 days.

So far, the SEC has rejected more than a dozen Bitcoin ETF applications over the last 3 years. Last month, digital asset manager NYDIG also filed for a Bitcoin ETF whose application is currently under review. Interestingly, North American investors have already got their Bitcoin ETF with Canadian regulators approving two Bitcoin ETFs – Purpose and Evolve – last month.