Switzerland approves first spot Bitcoin ETF for retail investors

JUST IN: Switzerland approves its first spot Bitcoin ETF for retail investors, with BIT Asset Management's fund set to begin trading on the SIX Swiss Exchange in November.

Switzerland just approved its first spot Bitcoin ETF for ordinary savers.

The regulator FINMA gave the green light to BIT Asset Management's Bitcoin Fund ETF, ticker BBIT, and it starts trading on the SIX Swiss Exchange in November. That's the exchange right here, in the heart of Zurich. Swiss only for now, no cross-border selling.

Now, Europe already has plenty of Bitcoin products, but most of them are ETPs, which are technically debt notes, so if the issuer goes down, you've got a problem. This one holds the actual Bitcoin, ring-fenced away from the company's own books. FINMA says it approved a Bitcoin-only fund for the first time because of its trading history and volume, and apparently more applications are already sitting on their desk.

So the country that invented private banking just told its citizens, go ahead, buy Bitcoin off the shelf. The queue behind BIT is already forming.

This is Sara White, reporting for HIT.