Skip to main content

3 reasons why a Bitcoin ETF approval will be a game changer for BTC price

A Bitcoin ETF approval will open the door for more conservative investors and this could have an irreversible impact on BTC price.

Some financial experts believe that the price of cryptocurrencies is solely driven by investors' speculation, and in the past few years detractors have suggested that fixed income instruments like treasury bills have no relation to do with digital assets. This point of view is fairly accurate because, at this time, most investors from the asset class are not allowed to invest in Bitcoin (BTC) and altcoins.

Public pension funds, retirement plans, fixed income and most non-leverage equity and multimarket mutual funds can only invest in certain asset classes. These limits arise from the fund class regulation, the fund's own bylaws, and the administrator's risk assessment.

Not every fund can invest in Grayscale's GBTC Trust

Unbeknownst to most, the mutual fund manager does not have absolute control of the investment decision. The fund administrator is a third-party company that acts as an intermediary between the fund manager and investors to verify and distribute assets tied to investments.

Therefore, the fund administrator might rule that a particular instrument poses a significant risk and either limit the exposure or deny access to it. The trust fund, in this example, is the investment vehicle used by the Grayscale Bitcoin (GBTC), and it involves an issuer credit risk.

Amundi funds breakdown by asset class. Source: Amundi.com

Global asset managers will typically have a 30% to 60% fixed income exposure, so it is very unlikely to have any exposure to cryptocurrencies. Amundi, the leading European investment firm with over $2.1 trillion of assets under management, is a good example.

According to BCG Group, the global asset industry has surpassed $100 trillion, with North America holding nearly 50% of this figure. Unfortunately, these astronomical figures cause analysts to incorrectly relate those numbers to the Bitcoin ETF instrument.

According to Reuters, more than half of all investment-grade corporate bonds in the eurozone now trade with negative yields. This includes $7.7 trillion worth of government debt and accounts for 70.8% of the total.

Financial Times has reported that the value of the global negative-yield debt has surpassed $16.5 trillion, fueled by investors' more pessimistic outlook and bond purchases by central banks.

Investors will gradually exit fixed income strategies

There's reason to believe that investors getting negative yields will eventually move to riskier assets, although it is improbable that a total shift to cryptocurrencies will occur. However, the most likely beneficiaries are non-leverage multi-assets and alternative investments as these instruments usually carry lower risk than equities and high-yield structured assets and bonds.

Consequently, an eventual Bitcoin ETF approval by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will open the doors for a vast array of funds that are currently shut out from cryptocurrency exposure.

Even if the ETF is exclusively reserved for a part of the equities and multi-asset classes, the new instrument doesn't need to capture $500 billion to propel Bitcoin's market capitalization above $2 trillion. Less than 2.5 million coins are deposited on exchanges, equivalent to $125 billion readily available for trading.

Commodity funds are the best candidate

According to iShares, the value of global commodities exchange-traded products adds up to $263 billion. Considering not every mutual fund is listed, it is reasonable to assume that the actual number surpasses $500 billion.

This means that a mere 1% allocation from this specific asset class is equal to $5 billion, and such an investment would surely be enough to propel the Bitcoin price above its $65,000 all-time high.

If and when a BTC ETF is approved, traders will front-run the potential inflow as soon as the approval is announced, regardless of whether the products capture only $5 billion in the first couple of months.

As long as governments and central banks continue injecting liquidity, buying bonds and issuing stimulus packages, there will be a gradual inflow to riskier assets, increasing the demand for the ETF.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.



from https://ift.tt/38vrBTA
https://ift.tt/3DzJX3V

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

DeFi isn’t dead, it just needs to fix these 3 critical problems

It’s been a rough year for DeFi, and it may not get any better until projects focus more on security, regulation and usability. The persistent challenges  decentralized finance  face have been well documented by a handful of analysts and the recent collapse of the Terra ecosystem re-enforced the fact that something is critically wrong with DeFi. I think DeFi today is completely broken for 99% of the population. The promise of a more transparent financial system has been overtaken by greed. UST/LUNA is just the latest in a string of bad developments: — Peter Yang (@petergyang) May 11, 2022 Let's take a look at what experts say DeFi needs to do in order to have another revival.  Improved usability To date, the promise of open and uncensored access to a global decentralized financial system has been largely hampered by the complicated interface, confusing multi-step staking processes and lack of clarity surrounding the yields on various tokens. What do you thi...

ENS DAO delegates offer perspective on DAO governance and decentralized identity

AlphaWallet CEO and Spruce co-founder talk about their roles as contributors to the Ethereum Name Service following the project's recent airdrop. Earlier this month, the Ethereum Name Service, or ENS, formed a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, for the ENS community.  Cointelegraph spoke to two ENS DAO delegates who applied for the opportunity to represent the community and stay involved in the decision making process: Victor Zhang, CEO of AlphaWallet, an open source Ethereum wallet, and Gregory Rocco, co-founder of Spruce, a decentralized ID and data toolkit for developers. Zhang spoke about his experience as an external contributor to ENS and an early supporter since 2018. Zhang initially sought to help ENS by offering Alpha Wallet as a user-friendly tool for  resolving .eth names and cryptocurrency wallet addresses. Essentially, if a user inputs an .eth name in the AlphaWallet, it will show the wallet address, and vice versa using reverse resolution. Alpha...

National Futures Association adds rules for members handling digital assets

The CFTC-linked self-regulatory organization (SRO) has disclosure rules for members engaging in activities with BTC and ETH; now, standards of conduct are being added. The National Futures Association (NFA), the United States self-regulatory organization for derivatives markets, has issued a new compliance rule addressing members’ conduct. The new rule complements requirements issued in 2018. The NFA has “well over 100” members that engage in activities with digital asset commodities, but no way to address fraud or misconduct committed by those members, the organization explained to secretary of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Christopher Kirkpatrick in a Feb. 28 letter as it submitted the proposed new rule for approval. The new rule is modelled on the NFA’s antifraud rules for exchange traded futures and swaps transaction and retail foreign exchange. The NFA is the only registered self-regulatory organization that has delegated authority from the CFTC, giving it a...