British firm Jacobi Asset Management will register in July the first Europe-listed exchange-traded fund (ETF) based on Bitcoin, according to Financial Times.
The firm received approval from the Guernsey Financial Services Commission to launch the product as far back as October 2021. According to Jacobi’s plans, the Bitcoin ETF was slated to debut in July 2022, but the Terra collapse it was delayed.
The firm also received listing for its instrument on Euronext in Amsterdam.
Jacobi representatives now say that “demand has changed a lot since last summer.” To date, all digitally traded assets on European exchanges have been represented as exchange-traded notes (ETNs).
Last year, Jacobi co-founder and chief operating officer Peter Lane said that structured-note issuers were misusing the term ETF to mask the risks inherent in investing in ETNs.
In his view, exchange-traded funds are safer because they do not permit the use of leverage.
According to the publication, the total value of assets blocked in European crypto exchange-traded products stood at €4.3 billion. The figure peaked at €10.5 billion at the end of 2021.
As a reminder, a real ETF race has been unfolding in the United States in recent months. On 15 June BlackRock submitted a spot Bitcoin ETF application to the SEC. Following the leader, similar filings came from Valkyrie, Fidelity Investments, WisdomTree and Invesco. In the queue, ARK Invest with 21Shares have priority based on the timing of the filings.
On 30 June, WSJ sources said that the regulator rejected the filings because they lacked sufficient information regarding the so-called joint surveillance agreement or details of this mechanism. The latter became a key addition to BlackRock’s application.
Subsequently, the aforementioned companies promptly submitted updated proposals to the regulator.