Today, Jamie Crawley at Coindesk reports Fidelity International is launching a Bitcoin exchange traded product in Europe.
“Fidelity International is listing its first bitcoin exchange-traded product (ETP) on the Deutsche Börse in Frankfurt and SIX Swiss Exchange in Zurich,” Crawley writes. “The Physical Bitcoin ETP tracks the price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market value and is being made available to Fidelity International’s professional and institutional clients in Europe. Fidelity Digital Assets will act as the product’s custodian. The ETP lists on the Deutsche Börse Xetra today and will become available on the SIX Swiss Exchange in the coming weeks, Fidelity International said in an email Tuesday.”
Why isn’t Fidelity also pioneering a Bitcoin-related ETP or ETF in the United States?
The answer is that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has done everything it can to prevent or delay Bitcoin ETFs from coming onto the American market.
Notwithstanding new choices like the Volt Equity ETF, the Valkyrie BTC ETF WGMI, or the ProShares Bitcoin ETF product, a true Bitcoin ETF in the American market does not yet exist.
Under current rules, investors can only get into a Bitcoin ETF that uses exposure through secondary companies with Bitcoin interests.
Efforts to get the SEC to approve an ETF directly based on Bitcoin assets have been unsuccessful over the last several years, as we reported extensively.
Canada and the European Union are further along.
A cryptocurrency ETF provides an excellent on-ramp for this kind of investing. There is a low minimum participation and these types of products can typically be traded in real time throughout the market day.
For now, though, investors are forced to use products like those ETFs above, or Grayscale’s Bitcoin Digital Trust.
To be fair, Bitcoin values have sunk about one third of the way from all-time highs, so there’s not a lot of clamoring to engage in swing trading on Bitcoin at the moment.
Stay tuned