I think that if the SEC were to approve it, bitcoin prices would more than double. Wow, how nice it would be to have insider information on when/if they will improve. One could make a killing on bitcoins in just a day.
Agreed. I think bitcoin won't actually enter a "mania" phase until we get a public ETF. Right now, it's just a lot for your average person to understand/figure out how to buy bitcoin. It seems easy to all of us, but when I talk about it with other people, they get a sneer and look at it like it's some sort of scammish fad... If investing in bitcoin is as easy as buying shares in Google or Apple, people are going to be all over it.
I don't see why a bitcoin ETF couldn't grow as large as the gold ETF (GLD), which is currently worth $33 billion. That would triple the value of bitcoin...