- The regulated Brazilian fund manager Hashdex will launch the world’s first regulated Bitcoin ETF in cooperation with Nasdaq by the end of the year.
- Hashdex announced on 18 September that the application had been approved by Nasdaq and that all regulations could be implemented.
A Bitcoin ETF is seen as the holy grail of the crypto market to attract new investors with large capital reserves to the market and thus pump fresh money into the market. To date, all Bitcoin ETF applications have been rejected by the SEC, on the grounds that the Bitcoin market has yet to mature. However, a fund manager from Brazil has now achieved a breakthrough.
Hashdex and Nasdaq to launch Bitcoin ETF by year-end
According to a report, the Brazilian fund manager Hashdex has signed an agreement with Nasdaq, which has approved the launch of a Bitcoin ETF. The approval was given on 18 September for the “Hashdex Nasdaq Crypto Index”. The ETF will launch 3 million Class E shares for trading on the Bermuda Dtock Exchange.
Local news outlet Infomoney says the fund should be launched and ready to trade by the end of this year. Hashdex chose Bermuda because of the legal framework, which is considered very crypto-friendly. According to the report, further information on the methodology and exact functioning will not be released until the day of the official launch.
Marcelo Sampaio, CEO of Hashdex, described that this step is a further confirmation that the interest of institutional investors in the crypto market has continued to grow today. The Nasdaq shows great confidence in the market as the first Bitcoin ETF worldwide has now been approved. Sampaio summed up aptly:
This process should also accelerate the entry of institutional investors into this segment. It is a trend that is becoming increasingly concrete.
According to the Brazilian news magazine Oglobo, the new financial product paves the way for global institutional investors such as sovereign wealth funds, pension funds and endowment funds to simply invest their capital in the crypto market. Hashdex is based in Ipanemda and was founded in 2018 by Marcelo and Bruno Caratori. Marcelo has already worked with Oracle and Microsoft on various projects and is well known in the Brazilian start-up scene.
Hashdex currently manages assets of almost $46,4 million, which are divided into 4 funds, three of which are listed in Brazil. These also include crypto funds, so Hashdex already has extensive experience in this sector. Hasdex’s custody partners who will store the crypto assets are Vo1t, Kingdom Trust and Xapo.
Most recently, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, Raoul Paul, predicted that a Bitcoin ETF would bring billions to the market and that the time was ripe:
I’m going to give you the biggest front-running opportunity of your life: they will get an ETF across the line. There will be billions of dollars that pour into it. Every pension plan will allocate some money to it. Every family office will allocate some money to it. And the more the price goes up, the more they will allocate.
Bitcoin ETF’s mercilessly rejected so far
In recent years, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has rejected numerous proposals for a Bitcoin ETF from the Winklevoss brothers and Wilshire Phoenix as well as the NYSE broker Arca. The reasoning behind these rejections was always that the crypto market is not sufficiently regulated and still needs to mature further.