Earlier today, six cryptocurrency ETFs went live in Hong Kong from China AMC, Bosera, and Harvest Global. Their launch briefly pushed the price of Bitcoin to an intraday high of $64,555.
During a recent Bloomberg interview, China Asset Management CEO Yimei Li said that she hopes that these products would allow mainland Chinese investors to gain exposure to crypto.
It is worth noting that mainland Chinese investors won't likely be able to buy Hong Kong's spot. Hence, ETF industry analysts believe that their inflows will be relatively meager due to the small size of the market.
China used to be the dominant player in Bitcoin trading volume. However, it famously banned crypto exchanges and initial coin offerings (ICOs) in 2017 in order to prevent financial instability and fight criminal activities. China ended up doubling down on its anti-crypto stance in 2021 by going after cryptocurrency miners.
Alex DovbnyaHan Tongli, the chief executive officer of Harvest Global, recently predicted that the ETF market would gradually open for investors from mainland China.
Ethereum's big test
Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg, said that the launch of cryptocurrency ETFs in Hong Kong will make it possible for analysts to get a clean look at how popular Ether is compared to Bitcoin in the ETF format.
Balchunas has predicted that Ethereum ETFs will account for a total of 10% of the total inflows.
In the meantime, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is widely expected to reject a slew of Ethereum ETF applications next month. Last week, leading Ethereum backer Consensys also filed a lawsuit against the SEC.
Arman Shirinyan
Vladislav Sopov
Dan Burgin