May. 14, 2022
Dear Sir or Madam: Please consider fast-tracking approval of the GBTC closed-end fund for ETF conversion. Withholding a spot price BTC etf does nothing but punish retail investors who are desperately interested in adding BTC to their portfolios without dealing with hardware wallets and crypto exchanges or removing funds from retirement accounts. Most BTC retail investors want to hold BTC long term, and the 2% GBTC management fee and ~9% contango penaltry on the BTC futures ETFs, respectively, are suboptimal/terrible vehicles for that. For retail traders who want to trade GBTC, the added complexity of an independently fluctuating 20-30% price discount is another way your delay in approving GBTC's conversion to a spot ETF is doing nothing but heaping complexity and injury on retail investors. BTC price volatility is no excuse or justification when retail investors have unrestricted exposure to the likes of Petaton, Netflix, Facebook, nickel futures, 3x leveraged ETFs, et. al. Please follow your mandate to protect retail investors by immediately reversing your injurious and prejudicial withholding of spot BTC ETF approval. -- Sincerely, Peter De Michele