The US could soon see ether-futures exchange-traded funds, but the cryptocurrency market doesn’t appear to care.
According to a report, eight businesses, including Bitwise, Volatility Shares, and ProShares, have recently submitted applications for exchange-traded funds based on futures for the second-largest digital asset. Even more unusual variations of the product, such medleys of Bitcoin, Ether, and futures, are even proposed to be listed in some of the filings.
Volatility Shares announced on Tuesday that it was eyeing October 12 as a possible debut date for its Ether Strategy ETF, which would trade under the ticker ETHU. Unless the fund doesn’t meet the rules of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, many ETFs can begin trading 75 days from their initial registration date. A request for comment from the SEC was ignored.
However, the crypto market didn’t seem to be bothered by the abundance of files. For the most of July and August, Bitcoin traded around $29,000, and Ether, which is currently trading at $1,740, has declined by around 6% since the beginning of the month. Both tokens, which together make up roughly 65% of the $1.15 trillion market capitalization for cryptocurrencies, are currently trading for less than half of their record highs. On Thursday, Bitcoin dropped to a two-month low of about $28,000.
Ben Johnson, head of client solutions at Morningstar Inc., noted that these topics are no longer frequently discussed outside of our peculiar little reality tunnel in the financial sector among people who aren’t always online on Twitter and checking tickers. In terms of widespread adoption and attention, the time has passed.
The filings are a part of a flurry of appeals that have recently been filed with the SEC in response to BlackRock Inc.’s unexpected application for the first Bitcoin spot ETF. In the two weeks that followed, the input from June raised the price of Bitcoin by almost 20%.
Yet Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at ETF data-provider and research consultant VettaFi, suggested that investors may currently favour stock-focused ETFs over cryptocurrency products.
For cryptocurrency ETFs, he claimed, there is less buzz. They are a specialised product that most likely only speculative investors use.
The first Bitcoin futures funds in the US were introduced in October 2021, and they immediately proved popular. The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO), the first to launch, quickly accumulated $1 billion in assets. But as time went on, flows slowed down since the fund was unable to maintain its velocity.
Despite being the best-performing stocks ETFs this year, cryptocurrency-based products have not attracted much investor attention. According to data, nine of the top ten performers are involved with cryptocurrencies. The top five are all up by a minimum of 100% by 2023. However, the nine have only received a total of about $40 million in inflows this year.
According to James Seyffart, an analyst, the excitement simply isn’t there.
According to BI’s Seyffart, investors may be recalling the Bitcoin futures launches that took place just a few weeks before Bitcoin reached its all-time high of around $69,000 in November 2021. In the same month, Ether hit $4,866.
Because they were the first and launched at the height of a crypto bull market, he added, it feels a little less exciting than the Bitcoin-futures ETF debuts. However, since there are still months before a probable launch, interest and enthusiasm are expected to increase as more people become aware that the Ether-futures funds are probably going to launch.
Even if the chances of both spot-Bitcoin and Ether-futures fund approvals are increasing, according to Noelle Acheson, the editor of the “Crypto Is Macro Now” newsletter, there hasn’t been much of an influence on the values of Bitcoin and Ether.
It appears that investors aren’t enthused about the possibility just yet, she added, despite US market observers who may be. This is strange because there would certainly be substantial inflows should approval occur, therefore there would be a lot of upside. However, it doesn’t feel like either is priced in yet, which is another illustration of how sluggish the markets are.
