“We have assembled a team that has successfully launched novel products before, and we firmly believe in the chances of success for this product,” added Cameron Winklevoss.
Still, it’s not clear whether the product will ever see the light of day. Since the Bitcoin market is unregulated and no futures exist, an ETF may not be possible, said Chris Hempstead, director of ETF execution services at WallachBeth Capital LLC.
And as Evan Soltas writes for Bloomberg, the lengthy risk factors section of the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust filing actually makes the best arguments against treating Bitcoin as an investment asset.
“It may be illegal now, or in the future, to acquire, own, hold, sell or use Bitcoins in one or more countries, and ownership of, holding or trading in Shares may also be considered illegal and subject to sanction,” according to the filing.
And that’s just one of many risk factors, not to mention the volatility of Bitcoin prices, which were trading around $90 on Monday after surging as high as $266 in April, according to DealBook.
So the Bitcoin product filing has fed the perception that ETFs encourage speculation and are dangerous for unsuspecting individual investors.
And for an ETF business trying to explain that its products faithfully tracked their underlying markets during the recent volatility, the filing probably couldn’t have come at a worse time, from a PR perspective at least.