New ad marks ‘shots fired’ in Bitcoin ETF battle for customers – DL News

Crypto index fund manager Bitwise released an ad today that appears to be for its Bitcoin exchange-traded fund — despite the financial product not existing yet.

The 15-second video features actor Jonathan Goldsmith, best known for the Most Interesting Man in the World meme and the beer commercial that spawned it.

In the ad, he is sharing drinks in a fancy restaurant with a young elegant couple. As the camera zooms in on the trio, Goldsmith looks up and says: “You know what’s interesting these days? Bitcoin.”

Text then appears on screen: “Bitwise. ETFs backed by crypto specialists.”

“Early shots fired in the Bitcoin ETF marketing war,” Bloomberg Intelligence ETF expert Eric Balchunas commented on X, noting that it’s easy to guess the ad is for a Bitcoin ETF despite no ticker being shared.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission is currently reviewing about a dozen separate filings for spot Bitcoin ETFs, including from BlackRock, Fidelity, and ARK Invest.

While the SEC has flat-out denied such applications in the past, the regulator is now engaging with potential issuers and taking meetings with them.

SEC chair Gary Gensler also said on December 14 that the agency was “taking a new look” at applications after a judge ruled this August that the SEC had wrongfully denied Grayscale’s bid to turn its Bitcoin Trust into a spot ETF.

Marketing war

Balchunas and fellow ETF expert James Seyffart have said the SEC has a 90% chance of greenlighting most — if not all — spot Bitcoin ETF applications at the same time, by January 10.

The reason for it? The SEC does not want to play “kingmaker” by giving some products an unfair head-start.

“Most of these [ETFs] essentially will be the same,” ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood said in August. “It will come down to marketing, communicating the message.”

Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz, also in the race, stated in an August earnings call that asset managers were going to “fight like cats and dogs to win market share” once the ETFs get approved.

Bitwise did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

From a broader perspective, asset managers have used crypto products to capture the imagination of a younger generation of investors.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink stated in 2020 that Bitcoin had “caught the attention and the imagination of many people” and that BlackRock’s website had seen huge traffic for Bitcoin items.

Similarly, Nate Geraci, president of financial advisor the ETF Store, said that even though Ethereum futures ETFs were doing meagre volumes, the products themselves could be chalked up to a “marketing expense” since they present the financial firms issuing them as “forward-looking around crypto.”

Tom Carreras is a Markets Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip about ETFs? Reach out at [email protected]