It's not an approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission, but the Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund has received approval to list on the CBOE exchange, according to a new report. SEC filing.
That will, of course, depend on whether the SEC grants Fidelity permission to offer a spot Bitcoin ETF to investors. Currently, the SEC still has a week before it needs to approve, deny or delay its decision.
A Bitcoin ETF, the white whale of the cryptocurrency market over the past decade, would allow traditional investors to gain exposure to Bitcoin without having to purchase and store the digital asset directly. In other words, investors can buy Bitcoin without having to know the ins and outs of cryptocurrency exchanges and wallets.
For this reason, analysts expect a rush of Wall Street money into cryptocurrencies if ETFs are approved. But the SEC was hesitant. Over the past 10 years, applicants for Bitcoin ETFs have been met with rejection after rejection from the SEC, often citing the potential for manipulation in cryptocurrency markets as the main reason. However, the entry of TradFi heavyweights, such as Fidelity and BlackRock, into the fray has changed the calculus.
After the latest round of delays from the SEC, the regulator now has until January 10 to make a decision on a handful of pending Bitcoin ETF applications it is considering. But analysts tracking ETF activity at Bloomberg Intelligence have narrowed that down and expect the SEC to make an announcement between January 8 and 10.
Right now — on a day when the mere mention of Bitcoin ETF orders possibly being rejected sent the market plummeting — it's a bullish sign. At the time of writing, Bitcoin has recovered slightly from its flash crash early Wednesday. It is trading at $42,595.05, according to CoinGecko, down 5.7% from this time yesterday.
Details of listing securities appear on Asset Manager Form 8-A12B, or Registration to List Securities on National Stock Exchange Form. It was filed with the US Securities Commission on Wednesday afternoon, when a large number of applicants were still waiting for word on their Bitcoin ETF registrations.
a The list maintained by the depository and clearing company (DTCC) includes indices for all active and pre-launch exchange-traded funds, or ETFs. It currently shows that the Fidelity Bitcoin ETF will trade on CBOE under the ticker FBTC on CBOE.
Having a ticker listed on the DTCC does not imply approval by the SEC. The cryptocurrency industry learned this lesson when markets fluctuated after BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust Index was delisted in October. At that time, merchants considered this a bad omen. But analysts pointed out that this is not necessarily the case.
“I think they were told or wanted to wait until they were days away, not weeks or months away.” He said Eric Balchunas of Bloomberg at the time. “Like I said yesterday, it was surprising to see him there.”
As it turns out, the IBTC (now IBIT) ticker had been on the DTCC list for several months before the broader cryptocurrency community took notice and panicked about its removal.
A DTCC spokesperson said Decryption In an email at the time the ticker had been on the list since August. The inclusion of the index “does not indicate any outcome of any regulatory or other approval process,” the company said.
Edited by Guillermo Jimenez.
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