Traditional finance has various options for indirectly owning Bitcoin. Between trusts, ETFs and proxies, one might be a better choice for investors than others.
There is a lot of speculation on what the price action will look like for Bitcoin (BTC) if a spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) is approved in the United States by the Securities and Exchange Commission. There is currently a long list of applicants, including the likes of BlackRock, Fidelity, VanEck and Bitwise. Grayscale, which won a lawsuit against the SEC in August 2023, is seeking to turn its current publicly offered Grayscale Bitcoin Trust into a spot Bitcoin ETF.
This begs the question: Is an ETF better or worse than a trust for investors who have their funds tied up in the traditional finance space?
To complicate things further, some companies hold Bitcoin on their balance sheets and can act as proxies for owning the asset directly.
