Recently, I have been wondering about crypto Next Big Moment.
what it will look and feel like when institutional money starts pouring in.
So I did a little digging.....
I found out that whats new in this country is old in hat in other parts of the world.
A bitcoin exchange traded product has been around in europe since 2015! An ethererum one has been around since 2017.
Now, these are ETNs or exchange traded notes.
they are not exaclty ETFs, but they are very similar. Unlike ETFs, they dont allow for ownership in a pool of securities. Rather, they are debt instruments that mature.
EUROPE BEFORE THE U.S
In 2015, a small swedish company named XBT provider listed two bitcoin ETNs on the stockholm Nasdaq exchange- one following bitcoin prices in swedish krona and the other following prices in euros.
it was a first sweden and for europe.
anyone could invest.
participants ranged from everyday investors buying as little as $500 to large Europian institutional clients investing millions. even with access to institutional investors, these exchanges traded products grew slowly at first.
and then 2017 what happened.
it was a breakthrough year. xbt introduced its two ethereum ETNs. And they took off. Within four months, it had miore than $359 million of assets under management.
XBt finished the year with more than $1 billion AUB- a 36X improvement over 2016. And the company's income shot up by 3.5X.
today, its bitcoin and ethereum products are accessible in 179 countries.... from any electronic brokerage platform that can interact with the Nasdaq family of marketplace.
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE, WHAT IS THE SAME?
coinshares has done a nice job of getting the ball rolling in Europe. And it did so without sams, fraud, hacks or compliant about volatility.
it was, heaven forbid, drama free.
in the US, I believe we are going to see many firms within a relatively shrt period be approved for an ETF. Will it be as drama-free as it was in Europe? Probably not. But Europe's experience shows us that bitcoin's next big moment can take off in a month and professional way.
Here we have accumulated a great deal of pent-up demand among institutional investors waiting for ETFs to be greenlighted.
That money is coming. It doesnt need a boom to pave the way.
It would take nothing short of a crypto crash to dent the impending rush of institutional money into the crypto space.
They all add up to a key inflection point in crypto's continuing journey toward looking like and feeling like mainsteam investing- crypro's new normal.
Invest early and well
Frank Asikaogu