This year is going to be a Happy New Year for The BitCoin Fund
(the "Fund"), whose final prospectus was approved by the Ontario Securities
Commission (OSC). It is the first public bitcoin fund to be
cleared by any Canadian securities regulator.
The Bitcoin Fund is a public investment trust that invests in
crypto-assets, the most famous of which is the eponymous bitcoin, a
decentralized currency that is not issued by any government or bank
(for more background on bitcoin, please see this Siskinds
note).
The Bitcoin Fund offers investors the opportunity to ride the
highs and lows of bitcoin without directly buying the currency. It
is managed by the Canadian fund manager 3iQ Corp. and utilizes a
third-party price index to value the Fund's bitcoin. While the
Fund is not the first crypto-currency investment fund, it is the
first publicly-traded fund cleared in Ontario.
