Things are looking up for the United States’ largest institutional bitcoin (BTC) product by asset holdings.
Data from the on-chain monitoring resource Coinglass confirms that As of April 21, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) is rallying towards 2022 highs.
After a troubled year so far, GBTC has benefited from the stabilization of the bitcoin price.
Bitcoin’s decline from its November all-time highs added to an already negative GBTC “premium,” meaning its share price traded at a discount to bitcoin’s spot price. That discount reached its all-time high in January, when GBTC’s premium nearly hit -30%.
Since then, there has been a declineand as of April 21, the premium is -21.4%, close to its smallest percentage for 2022.
The premium is the result of trading sentiment, and Grayscale has been under pressure over the past year, especially since the approval of the first bitcoin futures-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States.
Grayscale CEO, Michael Sonnenshein, and other industry figures have been outspoken critics of Washington regulators, who, while approving futures ETF products, continue to reject a bitcoin spot equivalent.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which approves candidates based on laws dating back to 1933, has been the subject of particular public ridicule, as other countries, such as Australia recently, jumped ahead of the US in launching.
Earlier this month, the SEC approved another futures-based ETF, this time based on the Securities Act of 1933, rather than the previously used Investment Company Act of 1940. This was a milestone Sonnenshein told CNBC this month. In fact, it corners the SEC, which has fewer and fewer excuses not to knock down the barriers to entry to a cash ETF alternative.
“It really is, we think, a question of ‘when’ and not ‘if,'” he explained. to the chain
“If the SEC fails to look at two similar topics, the futures ETF and the cash ETF, through the same lens, that would potentially be grounds for a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.”
Matt Hougan, CEO of ETF provider Bitwise, said in the same interview that a spot ETF “is what people really want” in terms of bitcoin-linked institutional investment products.
As Cointelegraph already reported, Futures ETFs have faced their own criticism, with commentators arguing that they do not solve any of the pain points that a spot product would have, while potentially bringing in new ones.
The Nasdaq highlights the “increase” in institutional demand
In the meantime, A Nasdaq survey of potential US investors revealed that more than 70% of respondents would consider exposure to bitcoin via a spot ETF if one were created.
“The vast majority of advisors we surveyed plan to start investing in or increase their existing investments in cryptocurrencies,” Nasdaq Head of Digital Asset Indices Research Jake Rapaport commented. in an accompanying press release published on April 11.
“As demand continues to rise, advisors will look for an institutional solution to the crypto issue that now dominates client conversations.”
The survey also found that 86% of advisors who already invest in crypto plan to increase that exposure in the coming year.
GBTC had 640,930 BTC in holdings as of April 21, worth $26.9 billion at the time of writing this article.
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