The investment firm VanEck’s bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund (ETF) is set to debut on the Chicago-based CBOE exchange next week, going live after delays since winning SEC approval in late October.
The CBOE said in a notice on its website that the new VanEck Bitcoin Strategy Fund will start trading under the ticker symbol “XBTF” on Tuesday, with a new-issue auction to open trading around 9:30 a.m. ET followed by dissemination of index data.
The launch date announcement comes just after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) late last week rejected VanEck’s proposal for a “spot bitcoin ETF” – one that invests directly in bitcoin rather than the futures contracts. The agency had previously delayed its final decision on the proposal in September.
- The VanEck ETF going live next week would join a growing roster of bitcoin futures-based ETFs launched over the past month following years of denials and deferrals by the SEC for a bitcoin ETF designed to track the cryptocurrency’s price. Some industry commentators have noted that an ETF backed directly by bitcoin would more closely track the cryptocurrency’s price than one backed by bitcoin futures.
- In October, the SEC greenlit the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (stock ticker BITO), which subsequently listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The fund quickly gathered more than $1 billion in investor assets, the fastest ETF ever to hit the milestone.
- Following ProShares’ much anticipated ETF launch, Valkyrie Investments’ bitcoin futures ETF started trading on the Nasdaq a couple weeks ago.
- VanEck bitcoin futures ETF won SEC approval in late October and made a regulatory filing at the time suggesting a launch date of Oct. 25, but company officials had declined to comment since then on why the new fund had not yet launched.
- VanEck press officials didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment on the CBOE trading notice.