Cathie Wood and Mike Novogratz Are Both Bullish on Spot Bitcoin ETF Approvals

Wood expects the SEC to approve multiple funds all at once, and Novogratz says his sources say they see approvals coming in four to six months.

AccessTimeIconAug 8, 2023 at 4:12 p.m. UTC
Updated Aug 8, 2023 at 7:48 p.m. UTC
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Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood and Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz are both optimistic that a spot bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund will be approved soon.

“I think the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), if it’s going to approve a bitcoin ETF, will approve more than one at once,” Wood, said on Bloomberg TV on Monday.

Novogratz — citing sources at BlackRock and Invesco — said during his company's earnings conference call on Tuesday that it's not a question of “if” but “when” one of the eight currently outstanding applications for a spot bitcoin ETF will receive SEC approval.

“It’s a big deal, because both our contacts from the Invesco side and from the BlackRock side gets you to think that this is a question of when, not if, that the outside window is probably six months,” Novogratz said. “And so you’re kind of in your four to six months, if you had to put a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey audit.”

Ark Invest, along with Invesco and BlackRock, is among the firms that applied for a spot bitcoin ETF — a vehicle that would allow institutional and individual traders to gain exposure to bitcoin without directly buying and selling the asset on a cryptocurrency exchange.

Such ETFs have been repeatedly denied by the SEC, but investor hopes are far higher this time around because of the involvement of asset-management industry giant BlackRock, which shook up markets in mid-June with its application for a spot bitcoin fund.

The SEC has already approved ETFs for bitcoin futures.

Edited by Stephen Alpher.

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Helene Braun

Helene is a New York-based reporter covering Wall Street, the rise of the spot bitcoin ETFs and crypto exchanges. She is also the co-host of CoinDesk's Markets Daily show. Helene is a graduate of New York University's business and economic reporting program and has appeared on CBS News, YahooFinance and Nasdaq TradeTalks. She holds BTC and ETH.


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