New York-headquartered investment manager, VanEck remains one of the many candidates that has had the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) deny its request to list a publicly-traded exchange fund tracking Bitcoin.
Given that a similar fund, albeit being close-end was recently listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, VanEck CEO, Jan Van Eck in a recent edition of Trillion’s podcast fielded questions about the possibility of a Bitcoin ETF in the United States.
While there are a number of over-the-counter (OTC) products in the U.S such as the Bitcoin Trust by Grayscale Investments, such products trade at fifty to five hundred percent premiums, a Bitcoin ETF would trade at a one percent premium or lower.
There are also chances that investors into these high premium private trusts could get hurt and lose money even if the price of Bitcoin went up, but the SEC has to date refused to approve a Bitcoin ETF.
According to VanEck CEO, Jan Van Eck “there’s no real legal or investment reason to not allow a product like that [in the United States].”
He also cited the recent market downturn as providing a perfect reminder that investors do not need Bitcoin to have volatility, a feature that an ETF listed on a public U.S exchange would likely dilute.
With the recent ‘super interesting’ correlation between Bitcoin and Gold amid the global economic uncertainty, the VanEck CEO, however, suggested that demand of Bitcoin is growing globally.
At the same time, Jan Van Eck played down the possibility of a Bitcoin ETF attracting billions of dollars, that is if the SEC eventually approves.
‘It wouldn’t be an instant billion-dollar ETF’, he said while adding contrary to popular belief that “investor appetite in the traditional world isn’t as big for Bitcoin as people might imagine.”
In a related report, Coinfomania report yesterday that Grayscale’s suite of crypto-related investment products attracted over $500 million in Q1 2020 with a significant portion of that amount coming from institutional investors.
