Bitcoin, a financial product like any other? Not yet, but the best-known cryptoasset took a major step forward on Thursday, January 11, by entering the American market for spot ETFs (exchange-traded funds), funds that allow you to invest in a stock, a stock market index. , a commodity or a portfolio of bonds without having to directly hold the asset concerned.
The simplicity of ETFs has made them successful over the last twenty years, to the point that this market is now worth more than 12,000 billion dollars (11 billion euros) on a global scale. Hence the challenge for bitcoin, still widely considered a financial product that is not easily accessible and which largely escapes regulation.
However, on Wednesday January 10, after months of waiting, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the American financial markets authority, gave the green light to eleven requests for listing of bitcoin ETFs, several of which were defended by certain of the main global players in fund management, such as BlackRock, Invesco, Fidelity or Ark Invest.
Price war
The latter did not wait twenty-four hours to take advantage of the decision and the first transactions on the new ETFs took place on Thursday as soon as Wall Street opened, with trading volumes of more than 1.4 billion dollars in less than an hour, according to Bloomberg data.
The price of bitcoin took the opportunity to briefly exceed $49,000, a level it had not reached since December 2021. It had already jumped by more than 150% in 2023, taking advantage of market access in advance. ETFs.
The anticipation of the SEC’s decision was such that the latter’s account
For investors, whether individual or institutional, it is now possible to bet on bitcoin by contacting your bank or your usual broker, without having to go through a specialized platform and without worrying about possible problems of liquidity, taxation or risks of piracy.
“It is the issuer of the ETF who will have to ensure that the bitcoins are held in adequate security conditions, which is also part of the challenges of approval by the SEC. The risk is not borne directly by the investors, the ETF is a very secure, regulated product”explains Me Frédérick Lacroix, associate lawyer at Clifford Chance law firm.
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