Valkyrie Proposes ETF of Companies That Hold Bitcoin

Why buy Bitcoin when you can buy stocks in companies that hold Bitcoin? And why buy individual stocks when you can purchase a fund that does it for you?

That's the basic concept behind the Valkyrie Innovative Balance Sheet ETF.

Valkyrie Digital Assets, a crypto investment firm, filed a prospectus for the exchange-traded fund with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday.

As the name suggests, an ETF is an investment product comprised of stocks, bonds, and/or commodities traded on an exchange like shares of a company. ETFs can be traded throughout the day, making them desirable to investors.

Similar to the JP Morgan Chase "cryptocurrency exposure basket" floated by the massive investment bank earlier this week, Valkyrie's investment product would mainly eye stocks from "companies that directly or indirectly invest in, transact in, or otherwise have exposure to bitcoin or operate in the bitcoin ecosystem."

Unlike that basket, it's not yet naming names. The JP Morgan offering is allocating half of the basket to MicroStrategy, Square, and Riot Blockchain, three public companies that keep Bitcoin on their books. (It's not including Tesla stock, though.)

According to the filing, the fund might invest in companies of all sizes, including non-US firms. It would invest not just in common stocks but perhaps other securities as well.

The SEC has yet to approve a Bitcoin ETF, prompting rejection-weary firms to get increasingly creative about providing investors exposure to BTC, even in an indirect manner such as this.