Digital Asset Manager Valkyrie Files for Bitcoin Futures ETF

The Nashville-based investment firm Valkyrie has filed its second attempt at a crypto-specific exchange-traded fund (ETF). 

The Valkyrie ETF Trust II “will not directly invest in Bitcoin,” instead seeking to purchase Bitcoin futures contracts traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), according to the investment firm’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing.

The CME is currently the only regulated platform in the U.S. to offer this type of product. If approved, the fund will be listed on the Nasdaq exchange, according to the prospectus. 

American investors have been asking for a Bitcoin ETF tied to the actual underlying instead for quite some time; however, the SEC is yet to approve any such product due to concerns of possible market manipulation.

Last week, the Commission’s chair Gary Gensler said that the regulator may eventually approve a Bitcoin-focused ETF, albeit under strict rules and not necessarily one that would provide direct exposure to Bitcoin. Instead, the SEC would rather favor ETFs tied to CME-traded Bitcoin futures like Valkyrie's.

Several firms, including Invesco and VanEck, moved to apply for such a product following Gensler’s remarks, with VanEck’s director of digital asset strategies, Gabor Gurbacs, telling Decrypt that a Bitcoin futures ETF would have an “easier path to approval.”

This is Valkyrie’s latest attempt to launch such an investment vehicle. Earlier this year, the firm applied for an ETF that would target stocks from "companies that directly or indirectly invest in, transact in, or otherwise have exposure to Bitcoin or operate in the Bitcoin ecosystem."