It seems that Canada has decided to take all the credits of the pioneer in the creation of investment products for the 21st century.
First, there were companies that somehow worked with cannabis. For the first time, they were listed on the stock market and got liquidity in Canada, and now there is even an ETF for this (another one, though, is traded in the US, but the Canadian is "cleaner"). The sector is booming and has excellent prospects, but it is not what we are talking about right now
Also, couple days ago there was the news that First Block Capital received the status of the mutual fund trust in the Canadian District of British Columbia for its flagship "FBC Bitcoin Trust", which is now distributed through the Neo Connect stock market along with traditional funds of such a giant as Invesco. The fund is on the platform now, and one of the main advantages of it is daily liquidity (not 30-day, as before). Moreover, such a status of an investment product (even if it is not listed on the stock market) allows Canadian private investors (so far only qualified ones) to buy it for their individual retirement accounts (IRAs) and savings accounts, including the tax-privileged ones.
Here is the link:
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180910005151/en/Canada's-Regulated-Bitcoin-Fund-Eligible-Accredited-InvestorThis is the ideal solution for most clients of asset management companies who want to get exposure to bitcoin but do not want to go into direct purchase and storage of cryptocurrencies. It is very typical for conservative investors who are backward-looking and do not want to deal with new stories, but also do not want to miss the opportunity to make money on these markets. The presence of this product on the fund platform, which is used by many advisors, will make it possible to include it in diversified portfolios together with another asset classes such as shares, bonds, gold, etc.
This piece of news, by the way, received much less media attention than the other one, from the SEC, which was negative. Specifically, the SEC froze OTC for XBT (Bitcoin Tracker One XBT Provider) until 20.09, which has long been listed and traded on the Nasdaq Nordic stock market in Stockholm. At the same time, no one stopped trading on the stock market itself, except that a day volume was lower than the monthly average.
So, media didn't pay much attention to the news from Canada which is totally unjustified. If the experiment succeeds (and the local regulator has at least no objections), then this will provoke the
SEC to act actively regarding the registration of rules and the possibility of investments for institutions in this market. In this case, we will observe a significant inflow of liquidity to the market and as a consequence a good upward signal not only for bitcoin but for all cryptomarket.