A pair of finance firms — First Advisors and the Anthony Scaramucci-led SkyBridge Capital — have joined the growing chorus of companies trying to win approval for a bitcoin exchange-traded fund in the United States.
The prospectus for the First Trust SkyBridge Bitcoin ETF Trust was published on Friday. As noted in the document, “[t]he investment objective of the Trust is for the Common Shares to reflect the performance of bitcoin less the Trust’s liabilities and expenses.” First Advisors serves as the advisor to the trust, with SkyBridge as sub-advisor, per the filing.
The First Advisors/SkyBridge effort represents the fifth initiative of its kind to be filed in recent days. The two companies join NYDIG, Valkyrie, WisdomTree and VanEck, though to date VanEck is the only application to be officially acknowledged by the SEC.
Beyond the borders of the U.S., other efforts to create bitcoin ETFs have advanced.
This week, news broke that Brazil will play home to a bitcoin ETF by way of B3, the country’s main stock exchange. QR Asset Management announced that it had won approval from securities regulators in the country, paving the way for an ETF launch that could come as soon as this summer.
In Canada, a series of bitcoin ETFs have won approval. Those successes have led some observers to speculate that U.S. securities regulators may break their years-long opposition to such products. The coming months will reveal if that is the case.