Attempts to build an asset offering financial exposure to bitcoin for the average investor has interested global entrepreneurs for years, yet an SEC-registered product that can be traded easily from a standard portfolio remains to be seen. Given the regulatory scrutiny such an instrument would be subject to, the most efficient way to access public markets with a bitcoin asset may be a known subversion of the standard issuance process: the reverse merger. In July 2013, Winklevoss Capital brought significant attention to this topic when they filed the S-1 for an ETF to track the price of bitcoin. The fund is still under review by regulators, with the lawyer tapped to manage the process recently stating that it has little chance of approval in 2014. Given that approval for J.P. Morgan’s copper ETF took more than two years to gain regulatory approval, it’s of little surprise that a similar instrument for a still-undefined underlying asset would take at least that long. SecondMarket’s Bitcoin Investment Trust has become a relatively popular...
The post The Reverse Merger as a Shortcut to a Publicly-Traded Bitcoin Vehicle appeared first on The Genesis Block.
February 03, 2014 at 02:00PM
