Bitcoin ETFs first US trading day: How it holds up to Europe

Spot bitcoin (BTC-USD) ETFs began trading Thursday following the US Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) decision to approve the offering of them on Wednesday.

Yahoo Finance’s Rachelle Akuffo is joined by WisdomTree Global Head of Research Christopher Gannatti — whose firm manages its own bitcoin fund (BTCW) — to discuss the differences between the European and US markets for these crypto ETFs. Wisdom offers eight crypto ETPs (Exchange Traded Products) in Europe.

Gannatti sees "massive trading volume" ahead for the US market despite Europe having "a four-year head start."

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Editor's note: This article was written by Eyek Ntekim

Video transcript

RACHELLE AKUFFO: This is something that you have already seen in Europe with your Bitcoin ETPs over there. Talk about how that compares to the market that you see in the US.

CHRISTOPHER GANNATTI: So it's fascinating to think about the fact that different regimes, different places around the world regulatorily speaking have had a different timeline to allow the use cases and ultimately exposures to spot digital assets. At the end of the day, when you look at the European study, a lot of those regulators and exchanges were earlier on the timeline, so a bit ahead of the game. It's fascinating to consider that in ETFs broadly, the US is ahead of and larger than Europe and basically every other asset class with obviously the exception now of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. So Europe has had basically a four-year head start, but we're already seeing massive trading volumes today within this ecosystem that has been created with these 11 different strategies.

So we'll see at the end of the day. I think in a couple of days with the futures-based strategy, there was more than a billion in AUM a couple of years back. And so at the end of the day, we'll have to see how these couple of trading days compare to that and where we are compared to European AUM within the first couple of weeks.