Jacobi Asset Management has informed the Financial Times that it shall launch the world’s first Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) after a year-long delay.

The BTC ETF was successfully authorized by the Guernsey financial regulator in October 2021, and was scheduled to be launched in July 2022, having decided that “the time wasn’t right” to launch the fund in 2022 amidst the Terra Luna cryptocurrency crash in May of last year alongside the FTX collapse in November.

In light of a brighter 2023, the renowned asset manager stated that “demand has shifted since last summer” and the ETF is believed to launch during the current month. This may induce a drastic change in crypto trading behavior in Europe, as all digital assets exchange-traded products in the continent so far have been structured as exchange traded notes (ETNs) rather than ETFs.

The major difference between ETFs and ETNs is that the shareholder of the former owns a portion of the fund’s underlying assets, while ETN traders and investors own debt security. Jacobi highlights that unlike ETNs, ETFs cannot be leveraged or use derivatives which could otherwise envisage market manipulation risks.

Sources:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-etf-europe-s-first-spot-bitcoin-etf-eyes-2023-debut-after-a-year-long-delay

https://www.ft.com/content/1d1de06a-a904-4db3-9017-4c061bd6854d

https://beincrypto.com/europe-beats-us-first-spot-bitcoin-etf/