Winklevoss Brothers Acquire Crypto ETF Patent

The first Bitcoin billionaires, Winklevoss brothers, have marked another milestone on the crypto financing market as they acquired a patent for the creating of a long-awaited Bitcoin exchange-traded-fund (ETF).

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has awarded a patent to a firm called Winklevoss IP LLP for exchange-traded-products (ETP) on 19th June. The patent document detailed it as a method “for providing an exchange-traded-product holding digital math-based assets.”

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Investopedia defines ETP as “a type of security that is derivatively priced and traded intra-day on a national securities exchange.” ETPs include various investment instrument including ETFs, exchange-traded vehicles (ETVs), exchange-traded notes (ETNs) and certificates.

Though the patent was awarded to the Winklevoss brothers-backed company, its inventors are the brothers themselves along with Evan Louis Greebel, Kathleen Hill Moriarty, and Gregory Elias Xethalis.

Winklevoss brothers are likely to list the instrument at Gemini, an exchange backed by them. Earlier this year, Gemini introduced block trading facility to cater to the increasing number of institutional traders trying to trade with large amount especially hedge funds.

Winklevoss brothers are actively working on crypto trading instruments, and according to publically available data, they have acquired seven crypto-related patents since last December.

However, despite the advancements, it is not clear when these instruments will hit the market given the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) harsh requirements. Earlier in March 2017, Winklevoss brother already tried to list Bitcoin ETFs on the exchanges, but the SEC rejected their proposal. Later in December, with the introduction of Bitcoin futures on two exchanges in the US, the crypto community was hoping to see ETFs as well, but due to the strict listing rules imposed by the SEC, that did not happen yet.