While the first Bitcoin ETF (BTC) offered by ProShares made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday, October 19, a second ETF has already entered the race, as of Friday, October 22. It is the exchange traded fund carried by Valkyrie Funds that just missed the feat, overtaken by ProShares’ fund by only 3 short days.
Valkyrie gets the second step of the Bitcoin ETFs
Last week, out of the blue, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) finally relented under pressure from the countless applications for Bitcoin-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
After the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO), many other funds are about to land on the US stock markets. One of them even got its first day of trading this Friday, October 22, 2021: the Valkyrie Bitcoin Strategy ETF, under the index “BTF”.
As Bloomberg reports, the Bitcoin ETF offered by Valkyrie began trading on the NASDAQ exchange with nearly $80 million in trading volume on this first day of trading. In fact, units of the BTF fund were launched with a unit value of $25, and more than 3.1 million of them changed hands in those first hours of trading.
Passed second ETF Bitcoin pays less?
Also based on Bitcoin futures, Valkyrie’s ETF is still doing significantly worse than its just 3-day-old predecessor. Indeed, ProShares’ BITO had managed to set a trading volume record for its “Day One”, with nearly $1 billion in shares traded.
“There seems to have been a first mover advantage that played out here [against valkyrie (…) Intuitively, I don’t think the performance of the second or upcoming [BTC ETFs] is as important in terms of advancing the asset class.”
Stephane Ouellette, co-founder and CEO of FRNT Financial
No sooner have they had their first Bitcoin ETF than investors are already bored, or at least focused, on this first BITO fund, whose name will be the only one retained thanks to its pole position? In any case, the leaders of the Valkyrie fund seem to be good players, and think that the cake to be shared is largely big enough for several BTC ETFs to coexist.
“The market can handle a lot of products from different issuers, and we very much welcome the competition – obviously we come in second in the market, but we’re very excited (…) we wish our competitors well.”
Leah Wald, CEO of Valkyrie Funds
And indeed, we’re going to have to accept the competition, as another Bitcoin-based exchange-traded fund is likely to land very soon, too, coming from a long-time veteran of the field. VanEck is already hustling the SEC to expedite approval of its BTC ETF, for which the decision will come no later (and with no further delay possible) than November 14.
