Should You Buy the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO)?
The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO, $43.28) is officially a blockbuster.
Cryptocurrency proponents scored one of their largest badges of legitimacy recently when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) allowed ProShares' new Bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund (ETF) to launch. That staunched a roughly eight-year stretch of failures – starting with the Winklevoss Twins' filing in 2013 – to get a cryptocurrency ETF not tied to equities approved by U.S. regulators.
BITO hit the exchanges on Oct. 19 to roaring demand, gobbling up $570 million in assets under management on its first day of trading. By the end of Day 2, ProShares' product toppled the billion-dollar mark and closed with $1.1 billion in AUM.
That's a chunk of history: As Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas points out, BITO eclipsed the SPDR Gold) as the quickest ETF to pile up $1 billion in assets.
