ETC Group, a London-based investment firm, is set to list a Bitcoin exchange-traded product (ETP) on Deutsche Börse’s Xetra electronic trading market later this month.
Per Tuesday’s press release, the ETP, called Bitcoin Exchange Traded Crypto (BTCE), will be physically backed 100 percent with Bitcoin which will be stored with the custodian BitGo.
The German financial markets regulator BaFin approved the Bitcoin-backed ETP in March, and, according to the issuer, it is the first such crypto investment instrument listed on the German exchange.
“BTCE brings the transparency and investor protection that regulators and institutional investors require to the world of Bitcoin,” Bradley Duke, CEO of ETC Group, said. “With BTCE, we are transporting Bitcoin into the fold of mainstream, regulated financial markets. Investors get the benefits of trading and owning Bitcoin through a regulated security. while having the optionality of redeeming Bitcoin if they choose.”
Apart from Germany, investors from the United Kingdom, Italy, and Austria can also purchase and hold the Bitcoin-backed investment product.
To distribute and market the investment product, ETC has tapped HANetf, which is a white-label ETF issuance platform. The company is known for issuing ETF’s of Cloud computing and medical cannabis in European exchanges and has now dipped its toes into crypto.
“Yet again HANetf is acting as a force for innovation, demonstrating the power of our white label ETF model to break down the barriers to entry to this market. Investors truly want value-added products and HANetf’s unique multi-manager platform delivers this – as the launch of BTCE proves,” Hector McNeil, co-Founder and co-CEO at HANetf, said.
Regulators are still cautious with ETFs
Though Bitcoin ETF hard to receive regulatory approval, crypto ETPs are gaining the attention of the mainstream European investors. A company called 21Shars is listing an array of such products on multiple stock exchanges in Switzerland and Germany.
