Investors may have traded a near-record amount of the new Bitcoin futures ETF on its first day, but prominent crypto bull Cathie Wood wasn't among them.
Her team did not buy into the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF "and one of the reasons is we're looking at this very carefully, the futures," Wood said at the Milken Institute Global Conference on Tuesday as part of an interview with Bloomberg's Carol Massar.
"There are some tax ramifications we'd like to understand more having to do with contango, which is contango versus more normal backwardation. So not yet," she added.
Futures typically trade at a premium to spot, a development referred to as contango. Contango and backwardation are terms for curve structures that map traders' guesses about what a given contract could be worth in the future.
Contango means it's upward sloping, while backwardation means downward.
ProShares' Bitcoin Debut
The fund from ProShares, which trades under the ticker BITO, is based on Bitcoin futures and is the first of its kind in the U.S.
It debuted as the second-most heavily traded fund on record. Well over 24 million shares of the ETF changed hands Tuesday, data compiled by Bloomberg show, with assets in the fund closing the first day at around $570 million, according to ProShares.
Investors are anticipating that more funds based on Bitcoin futures could start to trade in the U.S. soon.
Wood recently joined the slate of Wall Street players hoping to launch such an ETF. And according to a June filing, she also lent her firm's name to an application that would track the performance of the world's largest cryptocurrency as measured by the S&P Bitcoin Index.
