ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF Goes Live for Trading on NYSE, BTC Price Crosses $64,000

20. Oct 2021 Posted by Akolkar B on News

Finally, after years of wait, United States gets its first Bitcoin ETF from ProShares. The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) went live for trading on the NYSE Arca Exchange on Tuesday, October 19.

This Bitcoin ETF from ProShares tracks the Bitcoin futures offered by the CME Group. In what can be said as the watershed moment for the crypto industry, the ProShares Bitcoin ETF emerged as the second-most heavily-traded ETF fund on debut.

As per the Bloomberg data, the BITO shares skyrocketed 4.9% on Tuesday closing at $41.94 levels. More than 24 million shares of the Bitcoin ETF changed hands yesterday recording a turnover of a staggering $1 billion USD.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Simeon Hyman, global investment strategist at ProShares, said: “We are really excited to bring BITO, the first Bitcoin-linked ETF, to investors as an important opportunity for them conveniently to invest in Bitcoin in their regular brokerage account. This is going to allow many people who have been waiting for an easy way to do this and a robust way to do this to now be involved and have it in their portfolios.”

Besides, the options on BITO will start trading on the NYSE Arca Options and NYSE American Options exchanges on Wednesday, October 20. As said the ProShares Strategy Bitcoin ETF track the BTC futures contracts following the mutual fund rules which provides significant investor protection as per SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.

The news of the Bitcoin ETF launch has furled further rally in the Bitcoin price which is now trading above $64,000 and close to its all-time high. Amid strong optimism surrounding the Bitcoin ETF, the BTC price has already gained more than 45% so far in October. Several analysts have been predicting a $100K price target for Bitcoin by the end of the year.

Furthermore, analysts are also bullish on BITO’s prospects over the next year. Analysts predict that this futures-based Bitcoin ETF can attract over $50 billion USD worth of inflows over the next year. But ProShares can face strong competition from other market players who have been awaiting the Bitcoin ETF approval.

There’s strong rumor in the market that on Wednesday, October 20, the Valkyrie Bitcoin Strategy ETF can get a free light from the SEC and will trade with a ticker symbol of BTFD.

On the other hand, world’s largest digital asset manager Grayscale has filed with the U.S. SEC to convert its Bitcoin fund GBTC into a spot Bitcoin ETF. In its press release on Tuesday, Grayscale said that along with GBTC, it has 14 other investment products that it is planning to convert into ETFs.