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The Securities and Exchange Commission generally has been skeptical of cryptocurrencies, with chairs expressing concern that the product is too volatile, that investor protections are inadequate, and that regulations are insufficient, though current SEC Chair Gary Gensler has stated on several occasions that he had no intention of attempting to outlaw them. The agency has rejected multiple applications for exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that invest directly in Bitcoin over the last several years.
In August 2021, SEC Chair Gary Gensler said that he was open to the idea of ETFs that invested in cryptocurrency futures, but not those that invested in the spot markets, because the futures markets are already regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. In October 2021 the first two Bitcoin futures ETFs—the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) and the Valkyrie Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BTF)—were approved and launched. While a few others have followed, they are all limited to Bitcoin and Ethereum, as those are the only two cryptocurrencies for which an active futures market is currently established.