Europe's first direct Bitcoin index fund (ETF) will be launched this year

Europe's first direct Bitcoin index fund (ETF) will be launched this year

The first Bitcoin index fund (ETF) in Europe is expected to come onto the market this year. Jacobi Bitcoin ETF by Jacobi Asset Management was supposed to debut in July 2022 on the Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange. However, due to the difficult market conditions due to the collapse of the Terra ecosystem in May 2022 and the collapse of FTX in November of the same year, the listing was postponed. In October 2021, the Jacobi Bitcoin ETF received approval from the Guernsey Financial Services Commission (GFSC) to put on its Bitcoin ETF.

The asset manager has now decided to finally launch ETF, since he has found a gradual shift in demand compared to 2022. The investment company states that the laying of the ETF will finally be examined and a start date will be announced shortly.

The Jacobi Bitcoin ETF is a centrally processed crypto financial instrument that is kept by Fidelity Digital Assets. This represents a significant departure from the previous Exchange Traded Notes (ETNS), since this is structured in Europe as crypto financial instruments instead of funds.

The main difference between an ETN and an ETF is that the ETF share owner has part of the underlying assets of the fund, while ETN investors have guilt titles. In contrast to ETNs, ETFs cannot be levered or use derivatives to avoid market manipulation risks.

Although Europe approved its first direct Bitcoin ETF in October 2021, the US stock exchange supervision SEC has so far rejected all spot ETFs of this kind. In 2023, however, several institutional players, including Blackrock and Fidelity, have already submitted applications for spot ETFs, in the hope of becoming the first direct BTC ETF approved in the USA. The SEC has already approved some futures ETFs, which, however, deviate fundamentally from the "direct" variant, because they are based on futures and not directly on Bitcoin.