Cathie Wood and Mike Novogratz Are Both Bullish on Spot Bitcoin ETF Approvals

Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood and Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz are both optimistic that a spot bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund will be approved soon.

“I think the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), if it’s going to approve a bitcoin ETF, will approve more than one at once,” Wood, said on Bloomberg TV on Monday.

Novogratz — citing sources at BlackRock and Invesco — said during his company's earnings conference call on Tuesday that it's not a question of “if” but “when” one of the eight currently outstanding applications for a spot bitcoin ETF will receive SEC approval.

“It’s a big deal, because both our contacts from the Invesco side and from the BlackRock side gets you to think that this is a question of when, not if, that the outside window is probably six months,” Novogratz said. “And so you’re kind of in your four to six months, if you had to put a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey audit.”

Ark Invest, along with Invesco and BlackRock, is among the firms that applied for a spot bitcoin ETF — a vehicle that would allow institutional and individual traders to gain exposure to bitcoin without directly buying and selling the asset on a cryptocurrency exchange.

Read more: What Is a Bitcoin ETF?

Such ETFs have been repeatedly denied by the SEC, but investor hopes are far higher this time around because of the involvement of asset-management industry giant BlackRock, which shook up markets in mid-June with its application for a spot bitcoin fund.

The SEC has already approved ETFs for bitcoin futures.