With the impending approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs, the question now is when. Investment company CEOs are confident that the historic decision will be issued on Wednesday. On Tuesday, VanEck CEO Jan Van Eck suggested that his company’s Bitcoin ETF could begin trading on Thursday, lending credence to speculation that the SEC will begin approving various ETFs on Wednesday.
“We have a precedent… that’s what happened with Ethereum futures ETFs,” Van Eck said during a panel discussion hosted by CNBC’s Bob Pisani. “(Ethereum futures) was approved to launch on the same day. And I think the SEC, at a high-level policy level, doesn’t want any particular issuer of ETFs to benefit, so this is a fair way to handle that.”
More than a dozen spot bitcoin ETFs are awaiting final approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission to begin trading. While different mutual funds may compete with each other, van Eck says approval of ETFs would be beneficial for everyone.
“By the way, I don’t think this will be a winner-take-all market. I think the market share will be distributed,” Van Eck said. “There will be a lot of winners, and that’s good, that’s great.”
Van Eck noted that while the short-term market situation precedes the upcoming approval, investors may ignore other favorable scenarios for Bitcoin, including the upcoming halving and the Federal Reserve halting interest rate increases, saying that Bitcoin and gold are poised to rise with stores of value.
Along with anticipating the imminent launch of a spot Bitcoin ETF, Van Eck reiterated the company’s pledge to donate a portion of the ETF’s proceeds to Bitcoin Core developers.
“There are a lot of developers who worked for free to build the Bitcoin network and continue to add and make changes to that network, and we want to respect those developers,” he said. “So we’re donating a portion of our profits that we make from this ETF.”
Confident in Bitcoin’s investment potential, Van Eck likened the digital asset to gold, saying it was time for investors to start thinking about where to put the number one cryptocurrency.
“Some investors don’t care about investing in store value, but if you do, my view is that bitcoin is complementary to gold,” Van Eck told CNBC. “There have been other supplements to gold, silver, platinum and palladium over the decades. So that’s just a compliment. So let’s start here and think about where you would put it in your portfolio.”
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.