Bitcoin now has its latest US-based futures exchange-traded fund (ETF), with the Valkyrie BTF product officially launched on New York’s Nasdaq stock exchange. The crypto market overall, meanwhile, has pulled back a bit.
Digital asset manager Valkyrie’s ETF joins the similar ProShares product in the US market, BITO, which had been crushing it with record amounts of volume for an ETF launch in its first two days.
Because Bloomberg’s senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas is the go-to guy on Twitter for insights on these matters, we’ve gone to his feed once again…
As for the Valkyrie Bitcoin ETF, it also seems to be off to a reasonable start. Shame its ticker couldn’t have been BTFD, though… (Don’t geddit? Look it up here.)
“This Bitcoin Strategy ETF is a major leap forward for this asset class,” said Valkyrie CEO Leah Wald in a statement today.
“It enables investors to participate in the digital asset markets through a regulated, transparent product that trades on a trusted, reliable exchange and can be bought and sold as easily as any other investment currently available.”
Paul Tudor Jones still likes Bitcoin as inflation hedge
As has been well documented by Stockhead, and others, the current crop of regulator-approved ETFs track the value of BTC futures listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME).
A spot-backed, or physically backed Bitcoin ETF is the one the crypto crowd really wants, however, as this is the product that’d require funds to take full custody of Bitcoins, instead of essentially trading in IOUs at premiums and discounts to the actual BTC price.
As billionaire hedge-fund manager Paul Tudor Jones said to CNBC earlier this week regarding the new ETFs:
“I think a better way to get in would be to actually own the physical Bitcoin, to take the time to learn how to own it. But I think the ETF would be fine. I think the fact that it is SEC-approved should give you great comfort.”
Tudor Jones also confirmed Bitcoin is his preferred inflation hedge right now, against a weakening US dollar.
“Clearly, there’s a place for crypto,” he said. “Clearly, it’s winning the race against gold at the moment … It would be my preferred one over gold at the moment.”
Mooners and shakers
So, overall we’re seeing another reddish day in the crypto market. It might have something to do with some big-player profit taking after an extremely positive week on the whole. A week that clocked new all-time highs, and not just for Bitcoin.
At the time of writing, the entire crypto market cap, consisting of about 10,000 coins on about 550 exchanges, is down by about 1.5 per cent since this time yesterday. It’s chilling out around US$2.64 trillion in total valuation, give or take a few hundred million.
And as you can see from the top-coin market overview above, Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) are a little stagnant today – down about two to three per cent in the past 24 hours.
There are outliers in the top 10, though, most notably “layer 1” smart-contract platform Solana (SOL), which is getting very close to touching the all-time high of $2.13 it set about a month ago. It’s changing hands for US$2.09 and up 15 per cent.
Could ex-England football striker Wayne Rooney have caused a surge? Yeah, probably not…
One of Solana’s main rivals, Polkadot (DOT), is also having a decent day, up about four per cent, and digging in around US$44. Anticipation for the Polkadot parachain crowdloans is building. They begin on November 11.
And there are other strong ones in this playing field faring even better: Avalanche (AVAX) is up 11.5 per cent since yesterday, while Fantom (FTM), and Elrond (EGLD) are both about 11 per cent to the good.
And the the highly rated Kusama-based platform Moonriver (MOVR) is also glowing, up 24 per cent since this time yesterday, and +54 per cent over the past seven days.
DeFi beaut THORChain (RUNE), meanwhile is still surging, up 18.5 per cent over the past day and 35 per cent on the week.
As for the overall market as we head into the weekend, it feels like we’re in another holding (or HODLing) pattern, waiting once again for the next big move. Could go up… could go down… could go sideways. A fair bit of the market still seems to feel like this, though…