On Episode 11 of Hashing It Out, Cointelegraph’s Elisha Owusu Akyaw speaks with Valkyrie Investments’ Chief Investment Officer Steven McClurg about the state of Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and the future.
Regulators in the United States have put up stiff opposition to listing bitcoin spot ETFs, despite Canadian and European regulators giving the green light. McClurg points out that these approvals for the Canadian and European markets have also taken a long time. According to McClurg, the two biggest problems US regulators have with bitcoin spot ETFs are custody and market manipulation.
The chief investment officer believes that the custodial issue would have been largely resolved were it not for the FTX fiasco, which prompted regulators to take a step back to check custodians are safe before launching other bitcoin investment products to permit. On the second issue of market manipulation, McClurg believes similar products have argued in Canada why such concerns are moot.
Locally, companies like Valkyrie Investments are actively working with regulators to answer key questions about the safety of Bitcoin Spot ETFs. According to McClurg, Valkyrie has been educating regulators on how custodial works and taking notes on the due diligence the company has been conducting at various custodians, which has picked up red flags at some of the companies that went bust last year.
“We did due diligence on Celsius, Voyager, BlockFi and FTX and never boarded them. We have decided that they are not safe platforms to participate in.”
According to McClurg, despite the lack of Bitcoin spot ETFs in the US, people in the country can get exposure to spot ETFs from Canada through brokerage.
Related: Bitcoin’s price action in 2023 is driven by a desire to recoup losses, according to a professional trader
He also points out that some lawmakers, particularly in the House of Representatives, have been willing to pass legislation facilitating the adoption of bitcoin spot ETFs. Still, McClurg remains pessimistic about how quickly consumers will be able to access cash ETFs from the United States.
“We believe we can push this forward either in a future government after the next elections or through legislative action.”
Other topics discussed are:
- Bitcoin Futures ETF vs. Bitcoin Spot ETF
- Bitcoin mining ETFs
- General regulatory environment for crypto in the US
- Criticism of Bitcoin ETFs
Listen to the full discussion of Bitcoin ETFs on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or TuneIn. You can also check out Cointelegraph’s full catalog of informative podcasts on the Cointelegraph Podcasts page.
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