Bitcoin broke new ground in the US last week after the securities watchdog granted permission for the listing of 11 bitcoin-backed exchange-traded funds on the regulated stock market.
The decision followed a 10-year campaign spearheaded by Grayscale, sponsor of the world’s largest bitcoin fund GBTC, and later joined by BlackRock, WisdomTree, VanEck and many others.
These approvals by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also came with a warning from chairman Gary Gensler, who remains a permahawk on anything even partially related to crypto assets.
"While we approved the listing and trading of certain spot bitcoin ETP shares today, we did not approve or endorse bitcoin," he stated.
Permahawk or not, a recent court defeat effectively strongarmed Gensler into approving these bitcoin products.
Despite being a big deal, the US has effectively played catch up to other jurisdictions that have allowed spot-bitcoin ETFs as far back as 2022, namely Canada, Germany and Dubai.
Yet with regulatory approvals sweeping Europe, North America and the Middle East, the UK has remained a curious outlier, despite supposedly having a relatively proactive approach to crypto regulation.
To compound the frustrations of British investors who would like to engage in this fancy new class of thematic ETFs, UK regulation prohibits access to US-listed ETFs too.
London Stock Exchange to the rescue
On Monday, the London Stock Exchange announced that a suite of Europe-listed ETNs (or exchange-traded notes) have been added to the LSE-run, Netherlands-based Turquoise Europe trading platform.
Turquoise was formed by several major global financial firms to create a more efficient and competitive trading environment across Europe.
It operates as a multilateral trading facility (MTF) and offers traders a venue to conduct transactions in a range of European securities listed in different countries.
The platform is known for its innovative approach to trading, combining traditional trading methods with dark pool (anonymous trading) services.
Unfortunately, only UK professional investors can access these European-listed crypto ETNs, with the FCA maintaining a ban on the sale of crypto ETNs to UK retail investors.
This may change down the line, but for now, the only true way of betting on bitcoin as a UK retail investor is to hold it directly on the blockchain via a crypto wallet.
Though this is a slightly more technical process, at least it does not come with the inevitable fees associated with buying shares in an ETF.