With the Approval of BTC Spot ETF, Market Attention Shifts Towards ETH

On Wednesday, Eastern Time, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revealed in documents that it has approved 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs, including those from VanEck, Bitwise, Fidelity, Franklin, Valkyrie, Hashdex, Ark Invest, Grayscale, BlackRock, WisdomTree, and Invesco Galaxy. With this development, the long-anticipated “potential positive news” that has stirred industry sentiments for years has finally become a reality.

In October 2021, the SEC approved the listing of the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF, marking the first Bitcoin futures ETF in the United States, trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol BITO. The price of BTC reached a new high in mid-November, surpassing $65,000.

Unlike BTC futures ETFs, a BTC spot ETF implies actual funds flowing into Bitcoin. Taking BITO as an example, data from various sources indicates that 73.78% of the funds from ProShares' Bitcoin Strategy ETF are allocated to the U.S. dollar, while 26.22% are invested in U.S. Treasury bonds. BTC futures ETFs, in contrast, do not bring additional funds directly into Bitcoin.

The first-day trading volume of the Bitcoin spot ETF reached $4.6 billion. Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas noted that on the debut day of the 11 ETFs, there were a total of 700,000 individual trades of buying or selling. In comparison to the larger seed fund transactions, the number of individual user trades was much higher than he anticipated, which is considered a positive sign.

At the same time, there is attention on whether the approval of SEC for an ETH spot ETF can be obtained. Looking at the ETH/

BTC exchange

rate, with the approval of the BTC spot ETF, the exchange rate of ETH against BTC rapidly climbed from a low point to a short-term high in the short term.

According to statistics, the U.S. SEC needs to make approval decisions on several Ethereum spot ETF applications, including VanEck, Ark 21Shares, and Hashdex Ethereum ETF, by the end of May. Additionally, the SEC must decide on Grayscale's application to convert the ETH Trust into an ETF by June 18, Invesco's application by July 5, Fidelity's application by August 3, and BlackRock's application by August 7.

Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas previously stated that after the approval of a Bitcoin spot ETF by the SEC, there is a 70% chance of approval for an Ethereum spot ETF in May.