Quote from: richardsNY on March 02, 2018, 09:20:46 PM

Quote from: TheQuin on March 02, 2018, 02:48:05 PM

I think ETFs will happen eventually but the Bitcoin market will have to mature a lot and become less volatile first.

ETF's are nothing more than price trackers, really. It makes no difference that the market becomes stable or not. It's just that the SEC needs to stop acting like a complete hypocrite and allow this market to develop naturally. Everything tethering the price of Bitcoin or other coins has a certain level of risk involved, nothing will be able to change that in the coming years. If volatility was a real concern, the future markets wouldn't even be allowed to operate. On top of that, platforms such as CBOE and CME have various security triggers in place to halt the market at the time Bitcoin's swings become too wild -- on the first day CBOE halted trading several times. Cheesy

You snipped out the answer.

Quote from: TheQuin on March 02, 2018, 02:48:05 PM

Futures are mainly traded by professionals whereas ETFs are often held by retail investors so they are very different products with different markets.

The market circuit breakers are in place to help reduce the impact of flash crashes that can be instigated by fat finger errors triggering algorithmic trading systems. Without the circuit breakers, the algos can run wild and make things much worse. This is about volatility that occurs in minutes or seconds.

The volatility the SEC is concerned about on ETFs is that occurs over days and weeks that will affect your average retail investor who has sunk their life savings into a fund and only checks the statement once a month.
They think it is stable enough to be a trading product, but not yet stable enough to be an investment vehicle.

BTW ETF's are a lot more than just a price tracker as they have to be backed by something, either actual Bitcoins or futures contracts.

https://i.snag.gy/Qzf8D1.jpg

Src: http://www.etf.com/sections/features-and-news/bitcoin-etf-could-launch-6-months?nopaging=1