As supply-chain woes continue and the U.S. dollar battles to fight back inflation concerns, crypto remains an alluring port in the current financial storm. The recent approval of the first Bitcoin (BTC) futures-linked exchange-traded fund (ETF) to trade on both the NYSE and Nasdaq from asset managers ProShares and Valkyrie Funds, respectively, has created a whole new class of financial instrument, with resulting excitement in the markets. Valkyrie received explicit approval from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), while the ProShares ETF was simply not opposed.
This caps a big year for institutional finance interest in crypto. There was Coinbase’s monstrous $64 billion NASDAQ direct listing, while large pre-initial public offering (-IPO) venture capitalists (VCs) like Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) have also launched their own billion-dollar funds focused exclusively on crypto.