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The new idea is to build "leveraged" and "inverse" funds that
would rise - or fall - twice as fast as the price of bitcoin on
a given day.
Direxion Asset Management LLC plans to list such products on
Intercontinental Exchange Inc's NYSE Arca exchange if U.S.
securities regulators give the nod, according to a filing by the
exchange this week.
In the filing, the exchange said the listing "will enhance
competition among market participants, to the benefit of
investors and the marketplace."
Bitcoin is a virtual asset that can be used to move money around
the world quickly and with relative anonymity, without the need
for a central authority, such as a bank or government.
Bitcoin is one of the wildest trades in the market today,
delivering sharp gains and losses that defy explanation. Trading
has been expensive and difficult, with brokerages offering
limited access and specialist websites like Coinbase reporting
regular outages. Top voices on markets from economist Robert
Shiller to JPMorgan Chase & Co CEO Jamie Dimon have warned
people off buying bitcoin.
Yet asset managers have been racing to design more than 10
proposals for bitcoin funds that are currently before U.S.
regulators.
New ETFs could make access to bitcoin easier and, in the case of
the Direxion product, mean bigger stakes for investors, with a
25 percent gain or loss on one day doubled to 50 percent.
So far the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has declined
or put on hold all the proposals.
A spokesman representing Direxion declined to comment on the
latest filing as did a representative from NYSE.
Bitcoin gained nearly 12 percent on Friday to $16,928 on the
Bitstamp exchange.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Additional reporting by John
McCrank; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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