The chief investment officer at the largest crypto index fund manager in the US is very optimistic about what a spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) approval could do for the king crypto’s price.
Matt Hougan, CIO of Bitwise, draws a comparison to what happened to gold’s price after the precious metal secured its first ETF in the US in 2004, suggesting something similar could happen to BTC.
“People ask me: What happened when the first gold ETF launched in the US?”
Bitwise is one of numerous companies that has submitted a spot Bitcoin ETF application to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
In a recent interview with Thinking Crypto, Hougan said that Bitwise is focused on educating traditional finance stakeholders about Bitcoin.
“The thing to think about with the Bitcoin ETF – why it matters – is it unlocks this other segment of the market that essentially has no allocation to crypto, which is the financial advisor marketplace. Now this is an important market – it’s at least twice, and maybe four times as big, as self-directed retail investors. So the people who own crypto now are mostly self-directed retail investors. The financial advisor marketplace controls between 2x and 4x as many assets.
And so what we’re doing every day, with a 20-plus person sales team, is having meetings with these advisors, talking to them about what Bitcoin is, talking to them about where it fits in their portfolio, and laying the groundwork for when that ETF launches, for them to adopt it readily. We’re seeing real traction. There are a lot of advisors who want to allocate ahead of the Bitcoin ETF.”
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