Hong Kong is open for business as its bourse now includes spot Bitcoin and the world’s first spot Ethereum ETFs, which went live at 09.30 local time.
According to the HKEX website, Asia’s first spot crypto asset ETFs are “trading now” with 14 new funds listed.
Three ETF issuers have listed products – China Asset Management, Bosera Asset Management, and Harvest Global Investments under the tickers CAM, BOS, and HGI, respectively.
Asia Leading The Way
Brian Roberts, head of equities product development at Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, told Bloomberg, “We can continue to go into the physical spot asset, maybe composite types of products, eventually getting into maybe levered and inverse types of strategies.”
The first step is to monitor how the latest launches develop and mature before looking at other possibilities down the road, he added.
ETF issuers are confident that the products will be a big hit in the region. The head of digital asset management firm China Asset Management, Zhu Haokang, thinks Hong Kong’s launch day will be larger than America’s. At a press briefing on April 29, he said:
“I am very confident that the initial listing scale of Hong Kong’s virtual asset spot ETF (more than US$125 million) can exceed the issuance scale on the first day in the United States.”
“Judging from the numbers, the transactions are indeed far greater than the capital inflow of the U.S. Bitcoin spot ETF on its first day of trading,” commented Wayne Huang, head of custody firm OSL ETF, on the first day of raising funds.
Crypto analyst Willy Woo pointed out that the Asian market in user count is larger than the US and European markets combined.
Meanwhile, PointVille founder Gabor Gurbacs said that the East-West Bitcoin ETF competition is heating up, and Hong Kong wouldn’t launch crypto ETFs without China’s approval.
As I said many times, the East-West Bitcoin ETF competition is heating up. Hong Kong wouldn’t launch Bitcoin ETFs without China’s approval. China is determined to put up competition on institutional Bitcoin capabilities. Full nation state adoption game theory in effect. Game on!
— Gabor Gurbacs (@gaborgurbacs) April 29, 2024
“This is the first time we will get a clean look at how popular ETH is relative to BTC in ETF format,” said ETF analyst Eric Balchunas.
Crypto Market Reaction
Bitcoin prices hit an intraday high of $64,555 just before the launch but retreated to $63,400 at the time of writing. The asset has remained range-bound since the end of February.
Ethereum, which has been eagerly eyed since this is the world’s first spot ETF, hit an intraday high of $3,244 but also slumped sharply at the time of launch falling to $3,148 before showing signs of recovery.
However, it is too early to gauge the impact of Hong Kong’s spot ETFs on crypto markets just an hour after launch.
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