The world’s first two bitcoin ETFs have listed, both in the middle of February. Of all places, in Canada 🇨🇦 , on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
The first one, Purpose Bitcoin ETF, trades under the ticket BTCC, and had over USD 700 million in asset as of Thursday. The second one, Evolve Bitcoin ETF, began trading as EBIT and has assets of over USD 500 million.
Both started with management fees of 1%, which pretty high is as far as ETFs go. Evolve has since cut its fees to 0.75%.
Evolve has also started paperwork for an Ethereum ETF (press release).
In general, this means that the institutional infrastructure required to support an ETF is up and ready and running for the bitcoin world: a custodian to actually invest the money into bitcoin and hold that bitcoin securely, a reference price that the regulator is confident enough to sign off on, and so on.
I think it’s very interesting to see new jurisdictions like Canada open up to innovation like this.
The USA SEC has been wary of bitcoin ETFs for years now, having shot down many applications from asset managers to launch one. There have been new applications in 2021, and the Canadian green light may help persuade the SEC to follow suit.