Why Cathie Wood Isn't Buying The First Bitcoin Futures ETF

Cathie Wood, the founder and chief investment officer at Ark Invest, is holding off on investing in the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF BITO, which began trading on Tuesday.

What Happened: Speaking at the Milken Institute Global Conference, Wood told Bloomberg that one of the reasons Ark Invest hasn’t invested in BITO was “the tax ramifications” of a Bitcoin BTC/USD futures product.

“We’re looking at this very carefully, the futures. There are some tax ramifications we’d like to understand more having to do with contango versus more normal backwardation,” said Wood.

The ProShares Bitcoin futures ETF has already hit $1.1 billion in assets under management (AUM), beating an 18-year-old record for the fastest fund to a billion-dollar AUM.

RECORD BREAKER: $BITO assets up to $1.1b after today, making it the fastest ETF to get to $1b (2 days) breaking $GLD’s 18yr old record (3 days), which is poetically apropos. https://t.co/yGXyfwaogD

— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) October 20, 2021

Last month, Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas noted that Ark Invest had amended the prospectus for its ARK Next Generation Internet ETF ARKW to potentially open the possibility of investing in crypto exchange-traded funds in Canada. 

Balchunas speculated that ARK could swap out shares of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust GBTC for a Canadian ETF that physically tracks the price of Bitcoin.

“And I bet ARK sticks to Canada's bitcoin ETF as holding even after SEC approves bitcoin futures ETFs in the US. You can't beat a physically-backed bitcoin ETF (outside of holding bitcoin directly of course),” said Balchunas.

Ark Invest also has plans of its own to enter the Bitcoin futures ETF space. Last week, the investment management firm filed for a Bitcoin Futures ETF alongside Switzerland-based ETF issuer 21Shares.

If approved, the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin Futures Strategy ETF would trade under the ticker ARKA and actively track exchange-traded BTC futures traded on commodity exchanges such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

BTC Price Action: Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $66,930 on Wednesday. The leading digital asset was trading at $63,398, down 4.92% over 24 hours. 

Photo: Dmitry Demidko on Unsplash.