Bitcoin ETFs and the Path Forward for U.S. Crypto Investors
San Francisco • June 30, 2022
Since our founding in 2017, Bitwise has had an unwavering commitment to helping investors gain high-quality exposure to the most compelling investment opportunities in crypto. In support of this mission, in October 2021 we filed an application with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). We believed then, as we do now, that a spot bitcoin ETF would benefit investors by lowering costs and improving access to bitcoin.
As part of our application, we submitted more than 130 pages of original, data-driven research that sought to answer the questions the SEC had raised in prior spot bitcoin disapproval orders. This included robust statistical studies on the source of price formation in the bitcoin market, surveys of independent academic literature on the same topic, and contextual analysis of prior ETF launches. (Available here and here.)
We are disappointed with yesterday’s decision by the SEC to disapprove our application. We believe the bitcoin market has matured enough to warrant approval, that the data in the record supports that approval, and that a spot bitcoin ETF would ultimately benefit investors. Nevertheless, our path forward will be consistent with our actions in the past: addressing the agency’s questions with the same emphasis on collaboration, professionalism, and data-driven reasoning that has always guided our work. Bitwise has now invested itself in this worthy cause for almost half a decade, since our first ETF filing back in 2018, and we remain committed to bringing a spot bitcoin ETF and other high-quality crypto products to investors.
With our dedicated team of over 70 professionals and growing suite of 16 products—spanning ETFs, publicly traded trusts, private funds, and separately managed accounts—we continue to serve tens of thousands of financial advisors, individuals, families, and institutions across the country as a partner in understanding and accessing this new asset class.
About Bitwise
Based in San Francisco, Bitwise is one of the largest and fastest-growing crypto asset managers, offering both index and active strategies across a wide array of investment vehicles. The firm is known for creating the world’s largest crypto index fund (OTCQX: BITW), a suite of crypto-focused equity and futures ETFs, and investment products that span Bitcoin, Ethereum, DeFi, and NFTs. Bitwise focuses on partnering with financial advisors and investment professionals to provide quality education and research. The team at Bitwise combines expertise in technology with decades of experience in traditional asset management and indexing, coming from firms including BlackRock, Blackstone, Meta, and Google, as well as the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Bitwise is backed by leading institutional investors and asset management executives, and has been profiled in Institutional Investor, CNBC, Barron’s, Bloomberg, and The Wall Street Journal.
