Feb. 28, 2022
Dear SEC, I’m writing to support the conversion of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (Symbol: GBTC), currently the world’s largest Bitcoin fund, to the first Spot Bitcoin ETF in the United States. I am a 59 year old Baby Boomer who lives in New York. I saw the potential for Cryptocurrencies back in 2013 and finally invested in Bitcoin in 2016 followed by several others such as Ethereum , Link, Algrorand, etc. My initial purchases were visa via my brokerage and IRA accounts when I purchased GBTC. Back then, nobody cared much of this ETN and hence I was able to purchase it through both my Citibank and Merrill Lynch accounts. Then in 2018/2019 these firms decided not to allow me to buy or sell any of my GBTC so I was forced to close out these accounts and move to Fidelity. Here I continue to be a holder of GBTC waiting you to approval the Spot ETF so that I can achieve the proper value of this fund. This has now prolonged my ability to retire since in cashing out I will not realize the true value of GBTC and leave several millions of US dollars on the table if I do cash out any of my holding. The shame of it is that you continuously contend that you are protecting investors by not allowing the average investor to purchase a Bitcoin Spot ETF. But in reality you are just driving investors to purchase Bitcoin either directly from an exchange or any other approved ETF in many other countries around the world. So your actions are actually counter productive to protecting investors as they are seeking all other options to do exactly what you are not allowing them to do here in the US. If you want to protect investors, then you need to provide them with the ability to buy and sell Bitcoin here in the US via an approved ETF and not force them to seek potentially riskier and alternative methods to do what they will do anyway. You also open the door to schemes and fraud by many who are phishing to the general public and investing in their way to purchase crypto. By providing an Spot ETF, this will severely reduce the amount of fraudulent schemes that are being portrayed on the average investor who wants to invest in crypto but is not sure how to since there is not a Spot ETF available. Time has come to do what is right for the American people since a great majority of the world is already providing their citizens with the opportunity. Sincerely, Anthony Casalino