Although the starting day of trading on the short Bitcoin ETF was slow, the game changed as the volume of new products on ProShare increased on the second day.
The first short Bitcoin ETF from ProShares got off to a very slow start on its launching day on 21st June but gathered pace by increasing trading volume by 380% on day two.
The ProShares Bitcoin Short Strategy Exchange-Traded Fund (BITI) traded a lackluster 183,300 shares on launching day which ETF analyst at Bloomberg Eric Balchunas tweeted “less than 1% of the volume $BITO had at this time on Day One.”
However, according to Yahoo Finance, the next day’s trading volume jumped nearly four times to 886,200 shares worth about $36.2 million.
The BITI exchange-traded fund (ETF) permits investors to take short positions on the Bitcoin market without holding BTC themselves. Shorting means speculating that the value of a market or asset will fall.
ProShares CEO Michael L. Sapir exemplify the volume on day two as indicative of demand and the low fee structure of BITI.
“The reception that BITI is getting in the market affirms investor demand for a convenient and cost-effective ETF to potentially profit or hedge their cryptocurrency holdings when bitcoin drops in value.”
ProShares also delivers the Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO), which launched on October 18. BITO saw about $1 billion in volume on its first day of trading.
BITO’s volume was among the top 2% of all ETFs by November but has now lost 50.93% of its value since its inception.
Of course, $36M stakes in comparison to the $1B long positions on day one. This may mean most investors are ambiguous if there is an additional disadvantage from here. For the last 30 days, the largest crypto by market cap has lost over 30% of its value.
BITI’s relatively poor performance on launch day drew jeers from CFA at Bloomberg Intelligence James Seyffart. Seyffart tweeted on June 21 that within the first hour of trading, BITI had only done about $1 million in volume.
Seyffart accepted that he expected the opening volume to be low, but “Yea def not saying it’s a surprise. Though I must admit I’m a tad surprised it’s THIS low.”
By the close, BITI had done about $7.1 million in volume at a daily average price of $39.06 per share.
Australia’s new Bitcoin ETFs have also fought to attract interest. The Cosmos Purpose Bitcoin Access ETF (CBTC) was expected to attract $1 billion in inflows in April. Though, it and the ETFs 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (EBTC) launch days were deferred until May 12. To date CBTC only has $810,000 assets under management while EBTC has $2.8 million.
American traders still crave for a spot Bitcoin ETF which the Securities and Exchange Commission has denied for years. Commissioner Hester Pierce believes when industry insiders and regulators cooperate closer to ensure that both are on the same page, then only a Bitcoin spot ETF can be launched in the US.
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