Bitcoin climbs to record high after futures-based ETF debut

Pandemic-era liquidity, speculative bets & hopes of wider adoption fuel surge

Bitcoin rallied to a record high after a strong debut by the first U.S. exchange-traded fund investing in Bitcoin futures stoked optimism about the digital asset’s outlook.

The largest cryptocurrency jumped as much as 3.1% to $66,084, surpassing its previous peak from April and taking its 2021 surge to more than 120%. Second-ranked Ether pushed higher as did the wider Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index. 

Bitcoin has climbed to its latest high atop a tide of pandemic-era liquidity, speculative bets and expectations of wider adoption by institutional investors. The ride was volatile: the token plunged below $30,000 in June amid criticism of its energy consumption and China’s cryptocurrency crackdown. It then began to recover in part as the crypto sector adjusted to China’s broadsides.

“It’s a validating moment,” said Jesse Proudman, co-founder and chief executive at Makara, a crypto advisory firm. “It’s no longer a question of does this asset class continue to exist -- I think that’s a really meaningful mark in the history of the broader digital-asset class.”

The first Bitcoin-linked exchange-traded fund listed in the U.S. debuted on Tuesday as the second-most heavily traded fund on record in a watershed moment for the crypto industry.  

More than 24 million shares in the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF -- trading under the ticker BITO -- changed hands Tuesday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. 

With turnover of almost $1 billion, BITO’s debut was behind only a BlackRock carbon fund for a first day of trading, the latter ranking higher due to pre-seed investments, according to Athanasios Psarofagis at Bloomberg Intelligence.

Bitcoin’s biggest proponents back controversial arguments that the virtual currency is a store of wealth and a hedge against the most potent threat from inflation in many years. 

Wall Street
 

Wall Street enthusiasm has also increased: Bank of New York Mellon Corp., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley are among firms offering crypto-related services. Dawn Fitzpatrick, chief investment officer of Soros Fund Management LLC, said her firm holds some coins and that crypto “has gone mainstream.”

At the same time, there is a still a long way to go. For instance, SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci said that while there’s a “feeding frenzy” in crypto among about 10% of financial-services firms, the vast majority are hesitant about the asset class.

Over the past few years, a whole new crypto-economy has formed. Non-fungible tokens or NFTs -- which allow holders of digital art and collectibles to track ownership -- have surged into the limelight.

Decentralized Finance
 

So has the decentralized finance -- DeFi -- ecosystem, which allows people to lend, borrow, trade and take out insurance directly from each other, without use of intermediaries such as banks.