Cathie Wood’s Ark Investment has reported an increase in the ownership of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE) at the end of the second quarter.

In a new SEC filing, Ark reported 9,557,723 shares of GBTC, an increase of just over 10% from 8,675,881 GBTC shares reported at the end of March. In July, Ark bought just over 450k GBTC shares more, which would be reported after the end of Q3.

As for the ETHE shares, Ark reported owning 721,936 shares, which is a nearly 13% jump from 639,069 at the end of the first quarter.

Ark’s combined holdings of GBTC now represent a weightage of 0.65% across all of its funds, down from 0.9% at the end of March but up from 0.45% in June.

Grayscale Investments is the world's largest digital asset manager in the world which; just this week hired ETF veteran David LaValle as its global head of ETF to convert its $26.6 billion Bitcoin fund into an exchange-traded fund (ETF).

US SEC, meanwhile, has yet to approve a single Bitcoin ETF while in an interview with CNBC this week, SEC Chair Gary Gensler said that he would anticipate that his staff will “review potentially some ETF filings around investing in bitcoin futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange under what we call in our craft the 1940 Act.”

The 1940 Investment Company Act regulates mutual funds and closed-end funds, which intends to provide significant investor protections.

Gensler shared a similar openness to a Bitcoin futures-backed ETF at the Aspen Security Forum on Tuesday, following which $364 billion Invesco and ProFunds which manages $60 billion, filed for ETFs that provide exposure to Bitcoin through futures.

In case you were wondering whether ETF investors prefer their commodities served up via futures or physically, here's the assets of $GLD, $IAU vs $DGL (gold futures) pic.twitter.com/QmG1bhJBZ1

— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) August 5, 2021

“I’d be shocked if we don’t have a futures-based [ETF] product by year-end,” said Dave Nadig, chief investment officer and director of research of ETF Trends and ETF Database.

In the interview, Gensler also referenced GBTC, which, unlike an ETF, is a closed-end fund hence bearing a high premium or discount and not offering tax benefit either.

“We already have some funds in the crypto space. The largest has been around for about seven years, it’s not an ETF, but it’s been around; it’s about $20 billion in size,” Gensler said.

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