FTX failure set back approval of Bitcoin spot ETFs: Valkyrie investment manager
In episode 11 of Hasting it outCointelegraph’s Elisha Owusu Akyaw talks to Steven McClurg, the chief investment officer of Valkyrie Investments, about the state of Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and the way forward.
Regulators in the US have raised stiff opposition to the listing of Bitcoin spot ETFs even though Canadian and European regulators have given the green light. McClurg points out that even for the Canadian and European markets, these approvals also took a long time. According to McClurg, the two biggest problems US regulators have with Bitcoin spot ETFs are custody and market manipulation.
The investment chief believes the custodian issue would have been largely dealt with if not for the FTX fiasco, which prompted regulators to take a step back to scrutinize whether custodians are safe before approving more Bitcoin investment products. As for the second issue of market manipulation, McClurg believes that similar products in Canada have argued why such concerns are invalid.
Locally, companies like Valkyrie Investments are actively working with regulators to answer big questions about the safety of Bitcoin Spot ETFs. McClurg says Valkyrie has educated regulators on how custody works and shared notes on due diligence conducted by the company on various custodians, which picked up red flags in some of the companies that went bankrupt last year.
“We did due diligence on Celsius, Voyager, BlockFi and FTX and we never got on board with them. We decided they were not safe platforms to be involved in.”
According to McClurg, despite the lack of US-based Bitcoin spot ETFs, people in the country can have exposure to spot ETFs from Canada through brokerages.
Related: Bitcoin’s 2023 price action driven by desire to recoup losses, according to professional trader
He also points out that some lawmakers, especially in the House of Representatives, have been receptive to creating laws that make it easier to launch Bitcoin spot ETFs. Still, McClurg maintains a pessimistic view of how soon consumers can access spot ETFs from the US.
“We believe that either in a future administration after the next election or through legislative action, we will be able to push this forward.”
Other topics discussed include:
- Bitcoin Futures ETF vs Bitcoin Spot ETF
- Bitcoin Mining ETFs
- General regulatory environment for crypto in the US
- Criticism of Bitcoin ETFs
Listen to the full discussion of Bitcoin ETFs on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or TuneIn. You can also check out Cointelegraph’s complete catalog of informative podcasts on the Cointelegraph Podcasts page.
