Wall Street launches first fund that bets against Bitcoin

Source: Yahoo Finanças

(Bloomberg) -- Cryptocurrency naysayers, who think the collapse of digital assets is not over, have a new vehicle to bet on further declines.

The ProShares Short Bitcoin Strategy ETF launched on Tuesday is the first exchange-traded fund that bets against the largest cryptocurrency. By reversing the performance of a Bitcoin futures index, it offers a relatively cheap and easy way to profit from any losses from the digital token.

The fund arrives amid turmoil in the crypto sector following the Federal Reserve's rate hike last week. It's a sell-off where even long-term veterans start selling. Bitcoin is down about 70% since its November peak.

This increases the risk that the new fund has missed most of the drawdown. ProShares says that easing betting against Bitcoin will encourage more investors to voice their negative opinions about cryptocurrencies.

“We think there are a lot of investors who have a short-term or long-term bearish view of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general who didn’t act on their view because it was too difficult or too expensive,” said Michael Sapir, CEO of ProShares, in an interview. .

ProShares was also behind the first US exchange-traded fund linked to Bitcoin in October, the Bitcoin Strategy ETF. It was one of the biggest launches in ETF history, but it ended up marking the height of the digital asset boom.

Like most inverse ETFs, the fund is designed for short-term use only. It returns the inverse performance of your underlying index one day at a time.

The ProShares product is the first ETF betting against Bitcoin to be launched, with similar funds still awaiting approval.