Bitcoin Investment Trust (BIT), has gained final approval from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).
BIT, sponsored by Grayscale Investments, LLC, began in 2013 as a private company for those wanting to invest in Bitcoin, without actually investing in Bitcoin (securities), like Gold investors can without the worry of holding, and storing precious metal.
There is actually some merit to this. Making a Bitcoin purchase, is still not very easy task to accomplish, and buying anything of significant volume, is very difficult. Once the aqcuisition has been made, the chore of storing the coin in a safe place, is a tough decision and safely stored, is not exactly synonymous with Bitcoin, historically. Trusting a company to store it for you hasn't proven to
be a bulletproof plan either. It seems as if every other month, we learn about someone, somewhere, getting hacked, or the ever-so-frequent "inside job" being performed, resulting millions in stolen or missing Bitcoins.
Ultimately, from a security (no pun intended) perspective at least, the BIT offering makes some sense, especially to an investor wanting to diversify a portfolio and include XBT (Bitcoin), but with little desire to directly handle the virtual currency.
On a quick side note, I am officially not using BTC anymore, which is essentially just slang for XBT, the International Standards Organizations (ISO) currency code for Bitcoin. Its just now beginning to be adopted and to be honest, it just sounds cool, like anything with an X does, like Racer-X, Speed-X, X-Factor, Planet-X, Rated-X, , etc.., and just about anything you no longer want to be associated with, like X-job, X-wife, X-boss, and yes, I do know that's really "ex" but it sounds the same, and the "sound" is what I meant by it being cool.
It's not exactly clear if this will be a good thing or not for investors, CNBC has some comparisons, and a little history to back it up, but time is the only true test, so in coming weeks, we should be able to get a feel for where this is going to take us. Bitcoin is on the rise again, that's noted, it was at $271.62 at the time of this writing, up from about $220-ish a week ago.
BIT will become the first publicly traded Bitcoin related fund, and at least one source thinks this may help stabilize the ever-so-volatile price, which could be good for some, terrible for others. One thing that is good for everyone: Bitcoin is given another layer of legitimacy.
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