Market update - Oct. 27th 2023

Spot Bitcoin ETF(s) to be approved early 2024?

Following the SEC's decision not to appeal its loss to Grayscale in the circuit court, the likelihood of a physically backed Bitcoin ETF being approved in the US has significantly increased.

The SEC has been actively engaging with all S-1 filing applicants, signalling a positive move towards application effectiveness. Blackrock has applied for a CUSIP and made arrangements for seeding in anticipation of approval. While the exact timing remains uncertain, early 2024 seems to be the consensus among market participants.

The drama of the week was DTCC adding, removing and finally adding again, the proposed BlackRock fund to its listing of ETFs. However this is quite an obscure, administrative element of the approval process, and we don’t think it was intended to convey anything.

From a data perspective, trading volumes were back to 10billion US dollars a day on Monday and Tuesday, and we've seen 76 million US dollars of inflows this week so far in digital asset investment products - needless to say, this is very encouraging.

We'll see you on Monday for a new update and provide our outlook for the week.