RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil has become the second country in the Americas to approve a bitcoin (BTC, +2.14%) exchange-traded fund (ETF) following the three launched in Canada this year.
The Brazil Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM) has approved blockchain investment firm QR Capital’s bitcoin ETF which will trade on the Sao Paulo-based B3 exchange.
The fund will trade under the ticker QBTC11, QR capital tweeted Friday. “The QBTC11 will have as reference the CME Group index of bitcoin futures contracts,” QR said. Reuters reported Friday the ETF listing will take place by June.
This will be the fourth ETF of its kind following the three funds that launched on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) in February and March.
The first of these, launched by Purpose Investments, saw inflows of US$564 million in its first two days. (Purpose’s ETF uses index information from TradeBlock, a CoinDesk subsidiary.)
The U.S. Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) yesterday acknowledged VanEck’s application to launch a bitcoin ETF, which, if approved, would be the first of its kind in the U.S.
ETFs, or exchange-traded funds, are a special type of security that comprise certain assets (or baskets of them) and track their market prices. In the case of Bitcoin ETFs, that asset is BTC. ETFs are tradeable on traditional exchanges and allow institutions to gain exposure to an asset’s volatility without actually holding it.
According to QR Capital, QBTC11 would allow qualified investors to easily and securely gain exposure to Bitcoin without worrying about wallets or private keys.