The CIO of Bitwise, the largest crypto index fund in the US, Matt Hougan, is optimistic about the potential changes an approval for a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) could bring to the price of the largest cryptocurrency. Hougan expects Bitcoin’s (BTC) price to rally following an ETF approval, similar to how gold’s price rallied after its ETF approval.
Gold Spot ETF Approval vs. Bitcoin Spot ETF Approval
In an interview with Thinking Crypto, Hougan drew a comparison with what happened to the price of the precious metal after its first ETF approval in the US in 2004. As can be seen from the graph below, an ounce of gold traded at around $250 before the ETF approval, and after the approval, it sharply rose by over 475%. According to Hougan, the leading cryptocurrency could also see a similar surge after its ETF approval. Such a rally, with current prices, means Bitcoin’s price could reach $200,000.
Bitwise is among companies like Grayscale, 21Shares & Ark, BlackRock, VanEck, WisdomTree, Invesco, Galaxy, Fidelity, Valkyrie, Global X, Hashdex, and Franklin that have applied to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to present a spot Bitcoin ETF.
“We Started Educating Our Stakeholders About Bitcoin”
The CIO of Bitwise mentioned that the focus of the largest crypto index fund is to educate traditional finance stakeholders about Bitcoin. During the interview, he said:
The thing to consider about the Bitcoin ETF is that it will essentially unlock this other segment of the market that hasn’t been allocated to crypto, which is the financial advisor market. Now, this is a significant market because it’s at least twice, perhaps even four times larger than the self-managed individual investor market. Currently, most of those owning crypto assets are self-managed individual investors. The financial advisor market, however, controls 2 to 4 times more assets.
Therefore, what our sales team of over 20 people does every day is meet with these advisors, discuss what BTC is, where it fits in their portfolios, and prepare the groundwork for them to easily adopt it when the ETF is introduced to the market. We are seeing genuine interest. There are many advisors who want to allocate even before the Bitcoin ETF comes out.
