Investors ‘abuzz with anticipation’ for spot bitcoin ETF approval: CME

Gio Vicioso, CME’s head of crypto, told Blockworks that his firm has “been prepared” for the bitcoin rally taking place on Tuesday.

Bitcoin briefly touched $35,000 on Monday before settling around $33,000. The rally is fueled largely by the hope for a spot bitcoin ETF approval — something that the market may not get until early next year.

“The investor community in general is really abuzz with anticipation for the approval of a spot bitcoin ETF,” Vicioso said.

It’s not just retailers either. Vicioso told Blockworks that a very diversified mix of participants are coming into the space, and “those participants include both crypto natives as well as crypto focused funds. But we’re also seeing some of the institutional macro hedge funds, some banks, active in this space as well.”

There’s a “renewed interest” and “appetite” for crypto — largely bitcoin, he continued.

Vicioso’s comments are backed up by CME’s third-quarter report, which found that interest in both bitcoin and ether derivatives hit highs.

While Vicioso’s comments align with other analysts that the rally may have some legs to stand on, it may be too soon to say that crypto spring is here.

“It’s difficult to predict the future,” he said. But the momentum that the market saw after CoinTelegraph falsely reported that BlackRock’s bitcoin ETF had gotten the green light from the US Securities and Exchange Commission shows that the “investor [community] is preparing themselves for that particular event and positioning portfolios accordingly.”

Vicioso isn’t alone in his thinking, either.

“I’m not sure it’s time for crypto spring just yet, but crypto seems to have a lot of positive catalysts ahead of it,” eToro’s Callie Cox told Blockworks Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Michael Silberberg, head of investor relations at Alt Tab Capital, thinks that this rally — with the potential catalysts of the spot bitcoin ETF approvals and the halving — could last until April of next year.

“With the [halving] looming on the horizon, Bitcoin acting like a safe haven in the current market, and wealth managers with trillions of dollars entering a market that has only ever reached about a $2 trillion market cap, I expect this to be just the very beginning of a run up through to April of next year.”

“Frankly, I am surprised by how long this move-up took, but generally, the longer the consolidation, the greater the coming action,” Silberberg said.

But, Vicioso notes, it’s not just the potential for spot bitcoin ETFs as “institutions are now talking about things like tokenization and how do they deploy or employ, say, a tokenized strategy into their business.”

“So that is driving more interest in bitcoin and ether as…a backbone for tokenization is blockchain technology. We’re seeing many more say institutions talking about how to implement the technology and I think that that’s also helping to drive value in the individual coins led by bitcoin.”

Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.