Recent weeks have seen a surge in interest from traditional finance for crypto-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs). After the Securities and Exchange Commission took issue with its initial filing, BlackRock (NYSE:BLK) submitted a fresh application for a Bitcoin ETF on July 3. A week earlier, Fidelity led a crop of investment firms in lodging applications with the SEC for Bitcoin-based ETFs. Meanwhile, HSBC has become the first bank to offer Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) ETFs to customers in Hong Kong.
In the context of Bitcoin, it is often the seemingly positive news that is harmful over the longer term; and vice versa, short-term negative news often serves to strengthen the ongoing case for Bitcoin. A good example of the latter is the 2017 “Blocksize War,” when the Bitcoin community split into the big block camp that launched the Bitcoin Cash fork and the small block camp that implemented the Segregated Witness upgrade in Bitcoin.
