Hassan Maishera
$BITO records huge interest from the market
ProShares' bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund (ETF) was listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) yesterday, and it was welcomed with explosive interest. On the opening day, volumes for the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) were around $1 billion. The trading volumes stood at $999.473 million on its inaugural day.
Although many expected a massive launch, no one expected that the trading volume would be around $1 billion on the first day. James Seyffart, Bloomberg Intelligence ETF Analyst, stated that "It absolutely obliterated. The thing traded super tight and was within a penny wide pretty much the entire day. And it traded extremely close to the underlying futures and bitcoin itself."
Bloomberg Intelligence predicted that the product would top the launch of the VanEck Social Sentiment ETF ($BUZZ), according to Seyffart. $BUZZ did more than $400 million on its opening day, but ProShares' $BITO traded nearly twice that.
The analyst pointed out that most of the trading was retail as there weren't many block trades or large orders. Hence, indicating that retail investors are yet to enter the market. The crypto space has been waiting for the US SEC to approve a Bitcoin ETF.
The Bitcoin futures ETF differs from what the industry is really clamoring for; a Bitcoin spot ETF. However, many believe that the SEC would approve Bitcoin spot ETFs in the future as Canada and Brazil have already listed some Bitcoin and Ether ETFs earlier this year.
The leading cryptocurrency has been rallying over the past few weeks. Bitcoin briefly touched the $64k earlier today after surpassing the $63k psychological level. However, it was unable to attain a new all-time high.
BTC has retracted back to the $63k level again and could be gearing up to move past the $65k level over the coming hours or days.
