BTC Futures Open Interest Continues to Rise Following Bitcoin ETF Listings Last Month

November 5, 2021 Bitcoin.com

Valkyrie’s Bitcoin Strategy ETF Debut Listing Drops Over 4% — Proshares ETF Slides 3.5%

October 22, 2021 Bitcoin.com

Too popular: Bitcoin futures ETF in danger of hitting upper limit for contracts

October 22, 2021 Coin Telegraph

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Unprecedented demand for the ProShares futures fund could result in longer contracts that may stray from Bitcoin prices.

The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF is on track to reach a limit on the number of futures contracts it’s allowed after quickly becoming a little too popular.

After just a couple of days of trading, the ProShares ETF has reached 1,900 contracts sold for October and there is 2,000 front-month limit imposed by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

There are already 1,400 contracts for November and there is an overall maximum limit of 5,000 open contracts according to Bloomberg. One solution could be to offer longer contracts, but that would carry the danger of too much distancing from BTC prices.

President of the advisory firm the ETF Store, Nate Geraci, commented that the fund could start to diverge from market prices, adding:

“The ETF is forced to obtain Bitcoin price exposure at higher and higher prices as it goes further out on the futures curve.”

The launch of competing products such as the Valkyrie Bitcoin Strategy ETF which will commence trading today, and the VanEck ETF which is expected to trade on Monday, Oct. 25, may dilute the demand for the ProShares fund.

As reported by Cointelegraph, the ProShares ETF became the first-ever fund to hit $1 billion in assets under management in just two days. It beat an 18-year-old record previously held by a gold-based fund that did it in three.

Bloomberg senior ETF analyst, Eric Balchunas, said that the momentum will still be hard to stop at this point.

“The unprecedented early volume in BITO makes it like a snowball rolling downhill, as liquidity and assets begets more liquidity and assets.”

Balchunas also thinks that the success of Bitcoin futures products may speed up the approval of a spot-based Bitcoin ETF.

“Both the success, general functioning of ETFs and the clear issue of potential capacity of futures may get the SEC to reconsider or work out a path for spot.”

As reported by Cointelegraph on Oct. 18, Grayscale has already anticipated this and is preparing to convert its popular Bitcoin Trust into a physically-backed product based on spot markets.

JPMorgan says inflation concerns, not ETFs, driving Bitcoin price jump

October 21, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin

JPMorgan strategists say that interest in the newly launching BITO Bitcoin ETF could cool after a week or so.

Bitcoin (BTC) broke its all-time high price level following the launch of ProShares’ Bitcoin Strategy exchange-traded fund (BITO) on Tuesday, but JPMorgan Chase strategists believe the key driver behind the price jump is investor concern over inflation.

The BITO launch, which saw the highest ever first-day natural volume for an ETF, is “unlikely to trigger a new phase of significantly more fresh capital entering Bitcoin,” JPMorgan strategists said in a note.

Instead, JPMorgan believes that as gold failed to respond to concerns over rising cost pressures in the last couple of weeks, Bitcoin’s renewed role as a better hedge against inflation in the eyes of investors is the main reason for the current bull run. The team highlighted that the shift away from gold ETFs into Bitcoin funds is gathering speed since September and “supports a bullish outlook for Bitcoin into year-end.”

JPMorgan strategists exemplified the waning interest after the first week following the launch of the Purpose Bitcoin ETF (BTCC) in Canada, claiming that the initial hype surrounding BITO could also fade after a week.

As the first Bitcoin futures-linked ETF in the United States, ProShares’ Bitcoin Strategy ETF started trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 19 at an opening price of $40 per share. It enables investors to have direct exposure to cryptocurrency futures in a regulated market.

JPMorgan’s comments echo others in traditional finance. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn praised Bitcoin as a great hedge against inflation as the next market crisis looms on the horizon.

Bill Winters, the CEO of British bank Standard Chartered, recently noted the passing of a long period of low inflation, adding that “it’s perfectly reasonable for people to want an alternative to fiat currency.”

Bitcoin futures ETF hits $1B AUM in a record-breaking two days

October 21, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin

The ProShares Bitcoin ETF has beaten an 18-year-old record for the fastest fund to a billion-dollar AUM.

Since the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF started trading this week, it has become the fastest fund ever to reach $1 billion in assets under management (AUM).

The highly anticipated launch of the first Bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund in the United States, BITO, has resulted in a number of milestone achievements.

Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas reported that the fund was the quickest ever to reach a ten-figure AUM after just two days of trading. BITO easily surpassed the previous record holder, a gold-based fund with the ticker GLD, which took three days to hit the billion-dollar mark in 2004.

He commented that this was “poetically apropos,” presumably in reference to Bitcoin’s store of value properties and comparison to digital gold.

RECORD BREAKER: $BITO assets up to $1.1b after today, making it the fastest ETF to get to $1b (2 days) breaking $GLD’s 18yr old record (3 days), which is poetically apropos. https://t.co/yGXyfwaogD
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) October 20, 2021

Balchunas exclaimed “I’ve never seen anything like this. I bet ProShares is even shocked,” while retweeting a post by Bloomberg Intelligence research analyst, James Seyffart, who updated the original chart.

Balchunas commented that there may not be any contracts left to buy if this volume continues, referring to a post by ETFStore President Nate Geraci stating that nearly 45% of BITO exposure is now in November futures contracts.

“If $BITO keeps up this pace of inflows it won’t have any futures left to buy by the end of the month due to pos [position] limits.”

The ProShares fund also broke the record for the highest-ever first day of organic volume which hit $1 billion on Oct. 19 when it launched. More than 24 million shares were traded during its debut day and since the ETF went live, it has now traded more than $2 billion in volume.

Balchunas has predicted that the next Bitcoin futures fund launch will be on Friday. This is likely to be the Valkyrie Bitcoin Strategy ETF which is changing its ticker back to BTF in preparation. In crypto circles, the former ticker BTFD also referred to "buy the f*cking dip," which may not have gone down too well with the SEC.

I had said this was launching tmrw it’s actually going to be on Friday. sorry about that. https://t.co/fqaGwjgscO
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) October 20, 2021

The momentum has driven Bitcoin prices to a new all-time high of $67,276 on Oct. 20 according to CoinGecko. At the time of writing, the asset had retreated slightly to change hands around the $65,230 mark.

Bitcoin Futures ETF Becomes Second-Biggest Launch of All Time With Nearly $1,000,000,000 Worth of Volume on First Day

October 20, 2021 The Daily Hodl

Gary Gensler Explains Why SEC Approves a Bitcoin Futures ETF

October 20, 2021 Bitcoin.com

Bitcoin futures ETF debuts with highest ever first day ‘natural’ volume of $1B

October 20, 2021 Coin Telegraph

<div>Bitcoin futures ETF debuts with highest ever first day 'natural' volume of B</div>

bitcoin etf

ProShares’ Bitcoin Strategy ETF saw around $1 billion volume on its opening day, with 24.313 million BITO shares changing hands.

ProShares’ Bitcoin Strategy exchange-traded fund (BITO) saw the highest ever first day “natural” volume for an ETF, with the figure reaching a little over $1 billion by the end of the opening day.

It is second overall, tailing just behind the Blackrock US Carbon Transition Readiness ETF which booked $1.16B in volume on its debut in April.

The ProShare’s Bitcoin futures-based ETF launched on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on October 19 with an opening price of $40.88. According to data from TradingView, BITO closed the day at $41.94 with a total of 24.313 million shares changing hands, equating to a first-day volume of just over $1 billion.

Commenting on the BITO’s opening day performance, Bloomberg’s senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas tweeted that ProShares’ ETF was arguably the largest in terms of “natural” or “grassroots interest.”

If we don't exclude ETFs where their Day One volume was literally one pre-planned giant investor or BYOA (not natural), it still ranks #2 overall. Here's that list. The reason some of these shouldn't be included IMO is they don't really represent grassroots interest. pic.twitter.com/wmZiHnpFrS
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) October 19, 2021

Balchunas said Blackrock’s US Carbon Transition Readiness ETF (LCTU) April launch volume was “unnatural” as it was driven by “one pre-planned giant investor.” LCTU’s daily volume also fell off a cliff to between $2 million to $6 million in the days after launch.

There were reportedly $570 million worth of inflows for BITO on the first day, suggesting that ProShares’ ETF could rank itself as an industry heavyweight in terms of year-one net flows for a first-to-market single commodity ETF in 12 months.

According to data from FactSet, the top two single commodity ETFs leading the pack are Gold and Silver, with year-one flows of $3 billion and $1.7 billion respectively. Outside of commodities, the largest year- one flow for an ETP of $5.351 billion was for the Invesco QQQ Trust.

Wondering how big the new bitcoin futures ETFs might get?

The white papers we submitted to the SEC last week have some context. For instance, here's a table of the first year net flows into every first-to-market single commodity ETF (FactSet data).https://t.co/3UnIel6sfX pic.twitter.com/h5Jg6RdgWd
— Matt Hougan (@Matt_Hougan) October 18, 2021

While the bullish performance marks a significant milestone for ProShares and the crypto sector, Balchunas warned that it could have consequences for the other firm’s next in line to launch their own Bitcoin (BTC) futures ETFs:

“The other result of today is it makes life that much harder for the next in line ETFs to succeed. Time is of the essence. Every day counts because once an ETF gets known as 'the one' and has tons of liquidity, it's virtually impossible to steal.”

Following ProShares’ ETF launch on Tuesday, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Gary Gensler outlined in an interview why he, and the SEC, favor ETFs backed by Bitcoin futures as opposed to the spot price of BTC.

“BTC futures have been overseen by the SEC’s sister agency, The Commodities Futures Trading Commission, for the past four years. You have something that’s been overseen for the past four years by a federal regulator and it’s also been wrapped up in the SEC’s jurisdiction through the Investment Company Act of 1940,” he said.

Valkyrie’s Bitcoin futures-based ETF is set to be the second product to join BITO on the NYSE this week. It cheekily changed its ticker to BTFD, which is slang for Buy The F--ing Dip.

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