Europe's First Spot Bitcoin ETF Lists in Amsterdam

London-based Jacobi Asset Management has listed Europe's first spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) on Euronext Amsterdam nearly two years after it was first approved.

The Jacobi FT Wilshere Bitcoin ETF is regulated by the Guernsey Financial Services Commission (GFSC) and will trade under the ticker "BCOIN." Custody for the fund is provided by Fidelity Digital Assets and trading firm Flow Traders operates as market maker, Jacobi announced on Tuesday.

Jacobi first won approval for the fund in October 2021 with plans to list it in 2022. However the firm opted to push back its plans due to inopportune circumstances elsewhere in the digital asset market such as the collapse of the Terra ecosystem and the bankruptcy of crypto exchange FTX.

Exchange-traded notes (ETNs), often referred to by the umbrella term exchange-traded products (ETPs), are commonplace in Europe, however Jacobi's offering is the first ETF.

ETF shareholders own a portion of the product's underlying shares, while ETN investors own a debt security. Jacobi has said its ETF cannot be leveraged or use derivatives, unlike ETNs.

The listing means Europe will see a spot bitcoin ETF traded before the U.S., despite dozens of applications to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the last few years, all of which were rejected.

However there has been renewed hope that the regulator would approve a spot bitcoin fund, after asset management giant BlackRock (BLK) led a flurry of new applications featuring "surveillance-sharing" agreements designed to guard against market manipulation.

Read More: SEC Likely to Approve Several Spot ETFs, Sparking Next Bitcoin Rally: Matrixport