Canadian Bitcoin ETF Opens With $80 Million In One Hour

The long-anticipated Purpose Bitcoin ETF launched on the Toronto Stock Exchange and quickly received a massive wave of inflow. The North America’s first-ever Bitcoin ETF recorded the colossal $80 million worth of shares in its first hour.

The exchange-traded fund was approved in Canada earlier this month and relies on Gemini`s services to store traded Bitcoin. Financial experts are thrilled to see North America’s first ETF to make such results. Eric Balchunas, a Bloomberg ETF analyst, noted that the crypto community saw an “epic full first day” of trading.

Source: CryptoBrowser.io - 24hr Bitcoin Price graph

What differentiates ETFs from actual owning of crypto assets is that investors can participate in crypto trading “without the associated risk of self-custody within a digital wallet,” according to the company behind the ETF – Purpose.

“We believe Bitcoin, as the first and largest asset in the emerging cryptocurrency ecosystem, is poised to continue its growth trajectory and adoption as an alternative asset, further cementing the investment opportunity it presents,” Som Seif, Purpose’s CEO added.

Despite not being the first-ever Bitcoin ETF as Hashdex and Nasdaq launched a Crypto Index ETF in Bermuda, opening the doors for North American investors to join the crypto sector may be pivotal for the ecosystem. Many US companies tried to push Bitcoin ETF for approval by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), but with no success. In 2020, Bitwise Asset Management got rejected by the SEC, with claims that the Bitcoin market didn’t exist in America.

Europe, by contrast, has several crypto-tracking products which function similarly to ETFs.

However, the Bermuda government turned its country into an increasingly crypto-friendly nation, despite being a British territory in the Atlantic Ocean. The Hashdex Nasdaq Crypto Index ETF, running on Bermuda Stock Exchange (BSX), is designed to cover "a portfolio of cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based assets that are tracked by the [Nasdaq Crypto] Index," according to a BSX document. A total of 2,990,000 shares would be issued, each worth $5552.14, as of press time. This means the market cap for the Hashdex ETF is currently sitting at $16.6 billion.

Bermuda also announced that the government is testing the possibilities for launching a stablecoin, with Jewel bank and proposed to them to become the first digital assets bank in Bermuda.