ARK Invest Joins BlackRock and Fidelity in Race for Bitcoin ETF

When the world's largest fund manager, BlackRock, decided to apply for the creation of a spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) two weeks ago, nobody expected it to trigger a new fever in the cryptocurrency market.

The BTC price reached new highs for the year, and other Wall Street giants began to join BlackRock. Among them were Invesco, WisdomTree, Fidelity, and ARK Investment Management (ARK Invest), owned by popular investor Cathie Wood.

ARK Invest Updates its Bitcoin ETF Application

Although BlackRock sparked a wave of new applications to register a Bitcoin ETF, ARK Invest was the first to submit such an application this year. Cathie Wood's firm already filed an application in April to create an instrument that tracks the price of 'physical' cryptocurrency.

As the topic has become a hot item in the media and is elevating the prices of major digital assets, ARK has decided to refresh its application. As can be seen from the amendment filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) yesterday (Wednesday), the company made changes in its original application to make it similar to the one filed by BlackRock.

The most important updates include a contract to share oversight with the futures market run by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and a cryptocurrency exchange. This is most likely going to be Coinbase.

JUST IN: ARK has amended their 19b-4 for spot bitcoin ETF to include a surveillance sharing agreement bt CBOE and a crypto exchange (likely Coinbase), which makes their's like BlackRock's filing now, and puts them in pole position to be approved first bc they filed first. pic.twitter.com/P8PCmPdhln

The decision on the cryptocurrency ETF from ARK Invest, which it applied for with 21Shares, is first in line with the SEC. According to the current schedule, this should be decided by 13 August.

Bitcoin Prices Soar amid ETF Fever

At the time of BlackRock's announcement about applying for the creation of a spot Bitcoin ETF, one BTC cost less than $25,000. The cryptocurrency price was then testing at a three-month low.

Wall Street giants' interest in the market caused a dynamic increase in the crypto price. It rose by over 26% in a week and tested the $31,000 level, setting new highs for the year.

However, the on-chain data suggest that the upward movements were not due to greater network activity, but pure speculation and an influx of more cash into regulated cryptocurrency instruments. Although a spot Bitcoin ETF is not yet available, investors can take advantage of ETFs tracking the prices of BTC futures contracts, options or futures themselves.