Bitcoin Forum

When Bitcoin ETF? Not Any Time Soon, But Maybe by 2020

For the first time in more than a year, there are no active bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) proposals pending before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Money manager VanEck, financial services firm SolidX and Cboe BZX Exchange withdrew a highly-anticipated proposal Tuesday, citing an ongoing U.S. government shutdown as the reason. The proposal, first filed last June, faced a final deadline of February 27 for approval or rejection. Due to the shutdown, many legal experts anticipated that the SEC would reject the proposal outright rather than let it be approved by default.

VanEck CEO Jan van Eck said the companies will “re-file and re-engage in the discussions” with the SEC when the shutdown ends, he did not provide a timeline for when this may happen. And indeed, it is unclear when the government will reopen – while the U.S. Senate was set to vote on two different bills that could potentially re-open the government, neither bill passed.

https://www.coindesk.com/heres-whats-next-for-bitcoin-etf-prospects

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Apparently VanEck SolidX Trust is decided to withdraw their proposal and not to wait final deadline. Maybe a little strange decision, but obviously they realized chances for approval are actually 0 at this moment. Maybe it is good that this chapter is finally ended, at least there will be no false hopes that BTC ETF can make some changes this year.

In order for the US to approve an ETF, there needs to be more local market making and demand, because what can you do when all the crazy and shady stuff happens on exchanges they have no control over legally? I don't blame the SEC for not approving an ETF, this market just isn't ready for it yet, so let's wait and see what Bakkt and the Nasdaq entering this space will do. I'm certain that the odds of an approval are much higher with these players on board.

In the end, the market not responding either means the price has been adjusted (Jan Van Eck mentioned that they pulled 4000 Bitcoin investors which is quite interesting) last year to reflect this, or it simply doesn't care anymore. Let's be honest, they don't figure out spontaneously that it's better to withdraw their application. It's something they have been pondering over for months.

That's assuming the CFTC approves both Bakkt and Nasdaq's futures platforms, which I am not that confident about. I also don't like how Bakkt sells itself and teases with launch dates they can't back up without approval.

I'm glad that the speculation around this ETF has come to an end, because it was clear after the first delay that it wouldn't pass, which makes it even more pathetic how Bitwise thinks it will succeed with its ETF where Vaneck lacked....

We don't need an ETF. I said it before and I'll say it again. People are trying to make us think that ETF would start a rally but we had a rally to 20000 dollars without it and even better we had it in time when the first ETF was rejected and they reapplied and got rejected again. During that second rejection Bitcoin was worth twice more than it is now so let's stop pretending like the ETF has any impact on price.

This last time around, I don't blame Bakkt. They got stonewalled because of the government shutdown. I don't think anyone could have known we were about to see the longest government shutdown in history with 95% of the CFTC not working. They obviously seem to think approval is somewhat of a formality, and maybe it is, considering they aren't the first physically settled derivatives market anyway. Either way, until the CFTC opens the public comment period, we should assume nothing is moving forward.

The previous bull run was fueled by speculation because CBOE futures IIRC. And yeah even though several ETFs was denied, it was not Van Eck (or at least people still believe VanEck will definitely get an approval).

After watching the market, I believe the 4-year cycle from bull-bear will come again. So based on pure price history, 2020 should be the next crypto bull year.

Bakkt is trying to hype up itself in every possible way, which admittedly isn't always as professional, but hey, it's a crypto related platform so we can't expect anything to change here. Hype sells in this market, so do partnerships, funding rounds, hiring sprees, etc. It all indicates progress and demand, and people here love that. Everything better than silence, which people here don't seem to like.

I honestly believe it's only a matter of time before Bakkt is allowed to go live. People here tend to believe crypto is all there is, but the CFTC has more to focus on than just a tiny dot that represents crypto. I'm certain that most of the stuff they go through has way more priority than Bakkt. Give it some time.

Maybe I have been too skeptical about Bakkt, purely because of how they present themselves. I'll give it a few more months once the government shutdown is over for real and not just for a couple of weeks.

If they don't manage to launch before the end of the year, I'm sure that regulators aren't keen on their platform, and then mainly the reach and mass appeal they have. If Bakkt takes off, we can be up for a massive boost.

As for Nasdaq futures, I looked into what their futures technically represent, but can't seem to find anything that points at physically or cash settled futures. They say these are 2.0 futures, but what makes it 2.0?

Again, I don't think that the bitcoin ETF is actually as relevant as what people make it out to be.

Sure, an approval would mean a short term pump in prices, but apart from that fact, what else does it actually bring tangibly to help the bitcoin ecosystem? In my opinion, pretty much nothing. And there are also concerns of furthering market manipulation if bitcoin ETFs were to be approved, though that can't be stopped if it does happen.

The point is that to the average bitcoin user that transacts on the network, the ETFs mean absolutely nothing. It's going to be mostly used by institutional investors.

But yeah, I personally think that there is virtually no chance at this stage that a bitcoin ETF is going to get approved. Not any time soon, anyways.

The physically backed ETFs were open-ended, so they could lead the market upwards (because of arbitrage) if there was significant demand for ETF shares. I'm not sure that "helps" the ecosystem, but it could mean more than a short term pump. It depends what kind of demand there is for regulated Bitcoin-backed securities.


With physically backed, non-leveraged ETFs, I don't think that's a major concern. I could see it being a worry with inverse and leveraged ETFs like the applications from Direxion, though.

The whole "bitcoin ETF proposal" thing starts to get really annoying.
Even if bitcoin is ETF approved,do you people think that tons of institutional investors will start buying millions of bitcoins everyday?I really doubt this.

Maybe you should rethink what you said many times. The $20k value of btc was heavily manipulated thanks to the hardforks for free money, million tether printed and fake volumes. None of those can happen anymore because of the strict regulations around. ETFs are our last chance to gain momentum again.

You don't have any proof of that. The BCH hard fork happened 4 months before the peak, and the last significant hard fork (BTG) happened 2 months before the peak. There were obviously other forces causing the rise to $20,000.

The "Tether printing" allegations have never been proven by anyone. Either way, real people were trading on real exchanges at those prices in 2017. It doesn't matter if there were attempts to "manipulate." What matters is the price people were willing to pay.


Which regulations were those?

And because of this I don't believe in ETF in 2020. My prediction would be something like 2023-2025, because the market can't mature and get well-regulated in just one year. It's time for Bitcoin community to forget about ETF's for at least a few years, all these false hopes of ETF's getting accepted soon and sending Bitcoin to the moon only make people more depressed when they face the reality.

There had been too much hope and expectations about the approval of bitcoin by SEC while the approval is not forthcoming let forget about it for now as you rightly said more importantly now is to Focus or channel our resources  more on the adoption of bitcoin in doing that btc will gain more global recognition while its price action will take it course regardless of any SEC or Bakkt approval.

More like "NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN". I'm so sick and tired of those etfs and please let's just focus on working to make people use the cryptocurrencies for their daily needs. That is the most important key to bring back the life on crypto again. We always get stuck in the loop of forks and etfs and using btc is still an experiment for others.

It depends on what you refer to as being use, because people have shown that the only type of use they care about is speculation, and for that reason we'll see similar events continue to hold enough importance within the market.

Use needs stability, and the funny thing is that when we had stability, people complained that the market became too boring, and that yet again confirms that most people only care about speculation.

I'm of believe that it will take 5-10 years before the speculative aspect starts to lose against usage as currency or utility platforms in case of Ethereum and EOS. People aren't ready for it, and they don't need it either.

Guys and Gals, the ETF proposal was once again submitted after it was withdrawn, so the SEC now has 240 days to make their decision. This will take us to a new deadline of September 2019 if they take the whole 240 days to make up their minds.

https://www.newsbtc.com/2019/02/02/crypto-tidbits-vaneck-refiles-bitcoin-etf-wall-street-giant-to-launch-custody/

"  It is assumed that the newfound stability of the U.S. government reassured VanEck that its Bitcoin investment vehicle proposal could see approval, catalyzing the document’s resubmission. "

Why there is so much obsession about an ETF?
If we are not able as a community to increase the market cap without an ETF then we will not make this ecosystem grow further.
ETF will just increase the centralization in the blockchain and maybe after some time it may impact the price of Bitcoin negatively.

Then everything starts all over again for VanEck&SolidX, new 240 days of hope that SEC will change their opinion. But only thing they see as advantage this time is the newfound stability of the U.S. government, which does not seem pretty likely right now. Trump wants his wall and will not give up so easily from that, so maybe this temporarily shutdown stop it's just a break before another storm.

Yet one thing is avoided with these early submission of proposal, possible new shutdown this time next year. Importance of BTC ETF for some people is obviously quite large in view of their persistence that it is finally come to fruition.

Pump and dump. People want to sell the event.

ETF's are bullish by nature. If backed by the underlying asset, they will keep a large chunk of coins off the market if the demand is there. If it's just cash settled garbage, it will not do anything for this market other than taking away actual demand from the asset.

Institutions don't care if they buy the real deal or fake Bitcoins in form of contracts. It's the exposure they are after, because they don't seem to care yet about Gold 2.0 or Bitcoin being censorship resistant money.

this ETF was a great novel and made many people lose hope of a possible recovery, looking at things that depend on government approval has been a big disappointment. BAKKT is still pending approval and it is unknown whether it will be approved. People do not even have high expectations. ETFs are something else that has no chance of being approved in the next 2 years. I at the end of the year thought: if in January BAKKT is postponed, then we will see another disastrous year


because it would be a form of recognition by governments

It was bound to be delayed with how the government shutdown is affecting their functioning. If ICE doesn't manage to get Bakkt approved within 6 months, then you can be sure that it won't ever be approved in its current state.

The price itself can also play a role in this with how the CFTC might consider this industry to be an unhealthy environment to operate in, especially if the price keeps going down in the coming months.

Let's be honest here, the price going down for such a long period of time isn't a sign of strength. If the 200WMA breaks, you should expect this bear cycle to be different from all the bear cycles we went through in previous years.

The sooner the better.  More demand means a higher price, it is simple economics.  And ease of purchasing via something like an ETF instead of coinbase, mining, your own wallet or anything else is important.  Particularly for retirement accounts and the like.  I recommend people hold their own keys, otherwise it is an IOU, but in this instance the ETFs would be regulated and insured so it would allow someone's grandmother to diversify into it.

There are many facets to the ecosystem.  From day to day use cases (e.g. remittances), micropayments via lightning, to long term diversification into different asset classes by investors.  None are exclusive, and all are helpful to bitcoin as a whole.