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Bloomberg

Canada’s first blockchain exchange-traded fund shrugged off bitcoin’s bust to launch on Wednesday as planned.
Harvest Portfolios Group Inc’s Blockchain Technologies ETF traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol HBLK, opening at CA$11.09 (US$8.83) and rising to CA$11.48 (US$9.14) by 10.20am New York time, before dropping to its original price by 3.20pm.
On Tuesday bitcoin tumbled to below US$6,000 before rebounding – a substantial drop from its from its all-time high of US$19,000 in mid-December.
But investors should not confuse Bitcoin’s bust with blockchain’s brighter future, analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence said. 
Bitcoin recovers from plunge to under US$6,000 – but experts are calling for crackdown

As a technology, blockchain will evolve with new applications, increased transaction speeds and improved security, they said.
HBLK will invest in a cross-section of large, established companies and emerging businesses that are primarily involved in the development of blockchain technologies, the company said.
Its holdings include Hive Blockchain Technologies Ltd, Overstock.com Inc, BTL Group Ltd, and BIG Blockchain Intelligence Group Inc.
Three blockchain ETFs have been created in the US, although not without hiccups. Shortly before listing, the US Securities and Exchange Commission encouraged the firms behind the first two funds to drop “blockchain” from their names.
It’s a hoax: email about Hong Kong-China bitcoin crackdown is bogus
The regulator may have been keen to avoid a repeat of recent incidents, like when drink company Long Island Iced Tea Corp changed its name to Long Blockchain Corp and saw its stock price almost triple in a day.
Two of the ETFs, which track companies involved in the digital technology that underpins cryptocurrency transactions, launched on January 17 as the Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF, and the Reality Shares Nasdaq NexGen Economy ETF. 

Buyers have already poured a combined US$264 million worth of assets into both, but they might actually just be paying a hefty price for some pretty basic technology stocks, including Intel, IBM and Nvidia.
The third fund, known by its ticker KOIN, began trading January 30. The Innovation Shares NextGen Protocol ETF uses “natural language processing” to scan news sources to determine sentiment and spot keywords so it can create a portfolio of as many as 60 stocks.
As of Tuesday, KOIN had about US$3.5 million in assets and was down 4.5 per cent since trading started.


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Crypto rout set to deepen as Standard Chartered warns of further downside risks

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Bitcoin

Why bitcoin bust shouldn’t worry launch of Canada’s first blockchain ETF

The bitcoin secure global financial network cryptocurrency blockchain encryption in 2017. Canada’s first blockchain ETF is being launched despite volatility in the digital currency space. Photo: Shutterstock

The logos of bitcoin (BTC), etherium (ETH), dashcoin (DSH) and Litecoin (LTC) sit on the screen of a cryptocurrency automated teller machine (ATM) at the Deex Exchange promotional stand at the CrytoSpace conference in Moscow, Russia, on Friday, Dec. 8, 2017. CryptoSpace is Eastern Europe's largest conference dedicated to blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies and runs Dec. 8-9. Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg

In this Friday, Jan. 19, 2018, photo, a man walks past a poster of bitcoin displayed at a retail store in Tokyo. Blockchain is a decentralized technology that can make transactions safe and secure, but crypto-currency exchanges that trade bitcoins and other virtual currencies that are based on this technology have been hacked because they are not working on secure networks. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)