What do industry insiders say on the first day of Bitcoin spot ETF trading?

The spot bitcoin ETF officially began trading on Thursday after receiving approval on Wednesday. Industry observers and participants were quick to comment.

By the end of the day, trading volume on these ETFs had reached a record high of over $4 billion, and while some believe these approvals could spark a sell-off on the news event, the price of Bitcoin is currently holding around $46,000 after hitting a high of $49,000 early Thursday.

“ETFs are likely to create more demand, leading market makers to allocate more capital to support liquidity. Crypto market liquidity has not fully recovered from the FTX crash in November 2022,” Sui Chung, CEO of CF Benchmarks, said in an email.

“So this could be good for the entire crypto ecosystem, especially as it starts to attract the attention of this new group of investors.”

In response to the approval, Blockchain Association President Kristin Smith noted in a post on X that “the law is on our side.”

“Yesterday, we got approval for the ETF after a legal challenge. It shouldn’t be this way, but it is.”

The legal challenges of establishing a spot Bitcoin ETF have a long history in the cryptocurrency space. After the SEC’s decision, the issue has attracted widespread attention from industry insiders and casual observers.

“While approval may happen in a split second, the preparation actually takes years on both sides,” said Brett Tejpaul, head of institutional at Coinbase .

The Winklevoss twins were the first to file a Bitcoin ETF application in 2013, and they expressed their views after the SEC's approval.

Cameron Winklevoss echoed Smith’s assessment, posting on X: “Remember, the [SEC] approved a Bitcoin ETF not because they wanted to, but because they had to.”

However, Tyler Winklevoss noted that these approvals show that “Bitcoin is an unstoppable force and that the powers that be are powerless to stop it. They tried for more than a decade to fight it and finally gave in. Bitcoin won. It broke the system.”

The significance of the moment was not lost on Erik Voorhees, another long-time Bitcoin enthusiast , who wrote on X that Bitcoin is “the first ETF in history with a limited supply of its underlying asset.”

Crypto CEOs also joined the conversation. Richard Teng, the new head of Binance, said: "Today will go down in crypto history." Kris Marszalek of Crypto.com said the approval shows that "the US market is a long-term crypto market." Brad Garlinghouse of Ripple wrote: "I expect this to be another catalyst for institutional investment/adoption."

On the first day of spot trading for the Bitcoin ETF, brokerage platform Vanguard was found to have blocked funds. Multiple cryptocurrency supporters told X that they had cancelled their accounts on the platform.