Bitcoin ETF hype has Wall Street eyeing crypto potential

investmentnews.com:

It’s touted as crypto’s big breakthrough on Wall Street: The imminent arrival of bitcoin exchange-traded funds that will kick open investing in digital currency to the institutional and retail masses. 

That’s driving the latest hype cycle in the world’s largest token on bets that the likes of wealth managers and financial advisers will finally start to lavish a small portion of their trillion-dollar portfolios on the crypto promise. 

Thank an oncoming swing in the regulatory pendulum. The Securities and Exchange Commission is expected, possibly by mid-January or sooner, to green-light exchange-traded funds that will buy and sell bitcoin in the famously tax-efficient and cost-effective ETF wrapper — after a decade of rejecting such applications. 

At first blush, it offers a path to redemption for proponents of digital assets a year after the FTX implosion sparked the industry’s biggest existential crisis and emboldened crypto naysayers who’ve long dominated traditional finance. 

Now with the likely involvement of respectable heavyweights like BlackRock, Fidelity and Invesco, the spot-bitcoin ETF market has the potential to grow into a $100 billion juggernaut in time, according to Bloomberg Intelligence estimates. Galaxy Digital Holdings Ltd., which is working with Invesco Ltd. on an application, held a call earlier this month with roughly 300 investment professionals about allocating to bitcoin as an ETF debut nears, according to a person familiar with the matter. 

Jeff Janson is one of the people gearing up for the debut. The advisor at Naples, Florida-based Summit Wealth has already received calls from investors, young and old. 

“I feel like we are now staring down the gun barrel of the SEC finally delivering approval,”