Valkyrie joins rush with BTC spot ETF application to go with its futures, miners ETFs

Cryptocurrency fund manager Valkyrie is applying for a Bitcoin (BTC) spot exchange traded fund (ETF), joining several other finance firms that have filed similar applications with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the last week. Valkyrie filed an S-1 registration form for a Bitcoin spot ETF with the SEC on June 21. In it, the firm indicated that it would seek to list its fund on Nasdaq under the symbol BRRR. 

Valkyrie is an old hand at BTC futures ETFs. It launched the second BTC futures ETF in the United States, the Valkyrie Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BTF), in October 2021, and launched the Valkyrie Balance Sheet Opportunities (VBB) in December of that year. It liquidated VBB in October 2022. Valkyrie also runs the Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI) that tracks securities of companies that derive their revenue or profits from BTC mining.

On May 16, it submitted an application for a BTC futures ETF to be called the Valkyrie Bitcoin Futures Leveraged Strategy ETF (BTFD). The BTFD would be a fund, rather than a trust, as is the case for its proposed BTC spot ETF.

Valkyrie was apparently inspired to take action by the recent activity of its competitors. Valkyrie Investments chief investment officer Steven McClurg told Cointelegraph in a Hashing It Out podcast in March that he thought a BTC ETF would only be possible “in a future administration after the next elections or through legislative action.”

Related: Grayscale Bitcoin Trust nears 2023 highs on BlackRock ETF filing as buyers step up

However, BlackRock applied to list a BTC spot ETF on Nasdaq as a trust on June 15. WisdomTree and Invesco filed similar applications on June 20. There are also unconfirmed reports that Fidelity will file an application for a BTC spot ETF. Meanwhile, BTC is rising precipitously, up 6.41% at the time of writing.

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