Investors who want to bet on Bitcoin may soon have more options to choose from. Major financial firms including BlackRock, Fidelity and Invesco have submitted applications to sell US “spot” exchange-traded funds tied directly to Bitcoin holdings, and Grayscale Investments LLC won an Aug. 29 court ruling in its push to turn its Bitcoin trust into an ETF. In the past, the US Securities and Exchange Commission has routinely rejected these products, citing wariness over volatility and potential manipulation. But the Grayscale ruling and the BlackRock filing, in particular, might show the cryptocurrencies industry gaining the upper hand.

ETFs, a $7 trillion industry, are part of a broader family of products known as exchange-traded products, though people frequently use “ETFs” to refer to all of them since they are by far the largest and most popular category. Crypto-native firms and major Wall Street financial institutions alike are trying to launch a kind of ETF that actually holds Bitcoin, as opposed to the products that invest in Bitcoin futures. Futures-backed Bitcoin ETFs have been available to US customers since 2021, but the SEC hasn’t approved any applications for so-called spot Bitcoin ETFs. Issuers and investors are advocating for spot Bitcoin ETFs to be similarly accessible to retail and institutional investors in the US, a development that’s perceived as having the potential to greatly broaden participation in the cryptocurrency industry.