First Leveraged Bitcoin ETF in U.S. Sees $4.2M in Trading Volume Since Debut

Volatility Shares 2x Bitcoin Strategy exchange-traded-fund (BITX), the first leveraged crypto ETF in the U.S., started trading on Tuesday, witnessing about $4.2 million of worth of trading volume so far since it went live.

The ETF saw about $500k worth of shares traded in the first 15 minutes, according to data from Bloomberg. The current share price of BITX is around $15.48, after rising as much as 2% to $15.90 since the start of the trading session.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) allowed the ETF to become effective on Friday, setting the stage for it to start trading on Tuesday. A number of futures-based ETF products already trade in the U.S.; however, the SEC has consistently blocked spot products from launching. Other leveraged bitcoin futures products have also failed to secure the necessary approvals to launch.

The first ETF backed by bitcoin futures to launch was ProShares’ BITO, which saw about $1 billion of trading volume on its first day of trading in 2021, according to ProShares, and hauled in some $570 million of assets.