US regulators have approved a new breed of financial product that will give people a way to invest in bitcoin through their brokerage for the first time, as if it were a regular stock.
A selection of financial institutions, including household names like BlackRock and Fidelity, have been given permission by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), whose value tracks the price of bitcoin. The approval comes after a peculiar incident on January 9, in which a hijacker used the agency’s X account to announce the ETFs prematurely, leading to market chaos and forcing the SEC to publish a retraction.
The arrival of
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