It Looks Like China is Warming up to the Idea of Bitcoin ETFs...
TL;DR
It is rumored that soon qualified investors in the Shenzhen Stock Exchange could invest in BTC ETFs though the Hong Kong Stock Exchange through ‘Stock Connect.’
Full Story
While the US slowly figures things out in the courtroom (see previous article), there’ve been some interesting murmurings about China letting its citizens invest in Hong Kong’s BTC ETFs.
In order to understand how they plan to do that, we first need to understand how a little thing called ‘Stock Connect’ works.
Stock Connect lets qualified investors from one market (China in this case) to access eligible shares in another market (like Hong Kong), as long as they purchase a certain amount (but not too much).
Confused? We got you.
Right now, the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect connects the Shenzhen Stock Exchange with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, allowing certain investors to purchase certain shares that are only available on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (and vice versa).
Roughly one week ago, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange listed its first BTC ETFs.
And while a huge flood of money wasn’t poured in initially, these stock connect rumors would make their approvals more important than we first thought.
Not only is the Shenzhen Stock Exchange market cap bigger than Hong Kong’s, but it could open the floodgates for the other two huge stock exchanges (Shaghai and Beijing) to trade BTC through ETFs.
Before we get too excited about this it’s important to note that so far these are just rumors.
But boy is it a turnaround from when China banned Bitcoin mining and foreign crypto exchanges from offering their services to mainland customers in 2021.
Let’s see how things pan out.