Regulations for crypto assets at final stage, says Şimşek

ANKARA

Türkiye is about to finalize work to regulate and control the crypto assets, Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek has said.

“Our main goal with the crypto asset regulations is to make this area safer and to eliminate the risks that may arise,” he added.

Meanwhile, U.S. securities regulators have given the green light to a group of bitcoin exchange-traded funds, a keenly anticipated decision expected to boost the cryptocurrency.

Regulators on Jan. 10 approved proposals for 11 ETFs to list on leading exchanges, including the New York Stock Exchange, "on an accelerated basis," the Securities and Exchange Commission said in a 22-page order.

ETFs are traded on public markets, granting investors exposure to price movements in asset prices without taking direct ownership of the underlying assets.

The funds themselves, however, do invest in the digital currency.

The authorization of the ETFs or ETPs (exchange-traded products) —which are comparable to stocks or mutual funds as far as accessibility to everyday investors — "represents a pivotal juncture for the digital asset space, signifying a movement towards mainstream legitimacy and acceptance," said Thomas Tang, vice president of investments at Ryze Labs.

"Bitcoin ETFs, by virtue of their existence within a regulated framework, will infuse a level of institutional credibility into the realm of digital assets," Tang said.

Initially launched in the 1990s, ETFs took off in the early 2000s by investors looking for a simple and low-cost way to take bets on stock indices, commodities or a particular industrial sector.

According to management consulting firm Oliver Wyman, some $6.7 trillion were held globally in ETFs at the end of 2022.