I discovered there is a bitcoin ETP in GBP where as if you have access to swiss exchange you can buy in GBP with no FX conversion.
Itās called the 21shares bitcoin ETP in gbp ABTC on the Six exchange.
Hereās the new 21Shares Lists Its Key Crypto ETPs In GBP Further Widening Market Participation
Can we have that on the platform pls?
Thanks,
Laz
Thanks for the suggestion Zerbib. Six is the Swiss exchange, European exchanges are not on at the moment but will be I imagine once Euro expansion starts.
When you say not on! You mean on the platform, yes six is the swiss main exchange and they quote in GBP, would be great to have a bitcoin priced in GBP no?
For all you whoāve been begging for a bitcoin ETP in europe, hereās your chance to get it in GBPā¦ please vote and letās get our very own in the uk bitcoin ETP
We are not getting enough votes to add this ticker! Strange when so many people want to trade bitcoin via a safe and regulated way.
I think because its such a long shot from where we are right now - European exchanges need to be added first as the ETP is only on German and Swiss exchanges, then ETPs need to be offered as well.
A lot of people (myself included) also prefer to trade crypto directly on crypto exchanges as you can stake them and earn interest as well as invest in more than just bitcoin.
Very surprised as so many of us cannot be bothered dealing with wallets and how to send money to unknown banks outside the U.K. in order to trade crypto!
A ETP has it all included! And you can have it under a SIPP with your trusted brokers!
Only my opinion, but customers are paying a fare whack for avoiding the small inconvenience of setting up a wallet.
The marketing sells the ETP as an advantage as āā¦the crypto market in its infant stages, a number of issues still exist when purchasing these assets that time and technology have yet to resolve. By offering the convenience of investing through your broker, we save investors the hassle of setting up wallets, dealing with the risks of getting hacked, transferring your funds to the wrong address, or losing your private keys.ā
However that doesnāt ring very true to me and feels like they are marketing based on fear factor - that doesnāt bode well for the company ethics straight off the bat in IMO. The risk of being hacked isnāt resolved, you are simply placing your trust in 21shares, who themselves use Coinbase - a retail standard exchange. You are also paying a daily 1.49% management fee for that alleged convenience and risk reduction, plus broker fees.
There is no other apparent benefit in the ETP as far as I can tell either - unlike an ETF there is no diversification, the ETP is pure BTC no other coins, you are simply paying a lazy/fear factor tax to be blunt.
I use Coinbase myself, it took approx 5 minutes to set a wallet up, secure it with MFA, whitelisted addresses, a multi tiered approval process for withdrawals including a time delay and I donāt lose 1.49% daily for the convenience of not doing that myself.
There can also be a price difference between the BTC market rate and the ETP rate - at time of writing, the ETP costs $59.33 per 0.0050 BTC but market rate was $45.27 so thatās a further cut of potential profits.
So:
Negative market difference of $14.06
Daily Management rate $1.49
Broker rate (lets use Coinbase as thats what 21Shares use) of $2.61
Costs of $18.16 if Iād bought a single unit of the ETP today.
Compared to cost of $2.61 buying direct from Coinbase. Thatās a significant bite of any potential profit, assuming BTC moves enough on the day to end up in profit. Even taking out the negative market gap which presumably isnāt there every day, you are still paying an additional $1.49 daily to avoid the quite straight forward one off process of setting up a wallet - thatās not a massive overhead, but its an entirely unnecessary one and occurs regardless of the day ending in profit or loss.
Honestly, if anyone wants help setting up the wallet and securing it Iād be happier helping them for free then watch them pay a tax for avoiding a 5 minute task.
Jim1, Nice of you to answer and provide some opinion which you make on wrong assumption but let me clarify the inconsistencies you raised here:-
First, any crypto issuers do NOT trade the bitcoin Directly. this is purely a custody service with coinbase . The market makers deliver inkind bitcoin to 21shares and they manage the ETP as annual , and yes it is annual fee of 149 bps so 1.49/360% and not your daily calculation of 1.49% however you would pay That to coinbase upon buying your crypto plus a custody fee and on top of that they are not transparent With their spreads which you have no way of finding out as a new client what you paid, you just receive a conversion rate at their discretion . You would never see this in the etf market!
I just did a quick calculation and the price is bang on NAV to 0.00495 btc ( not 0.005 as you mentioned) and is well described on their website under the abtc product. Your negative market difference is completely inaccurate as itās actually priced exactly at par ( there is a official market spread of 25bps ) again highlighted by the exchange.
The real reason is itās price directly in gbp so you have no conversion fees with your broker which take 49 gbp In a foreign currency as seen with HL for xbt provider ETP. On top of their hand Grenade fees for the FX conversion. Yet another reason to buy a crypto ETP, but this ETP is the only one priced in gbp by the market maker so the broker cannot charge you any fees on topā¦
Also you can park them in SIPP Account where as all good bitcoin traders would have to report their cgt in coinbase, ohhh sorry cb does it for you and reports it to hmrc! Nice work there.
So please do your calculation again and come back with an accurate updated result, I suspect you will want to buy the ETP hands down.
Actually Jim1, I think you confused this ETP to GBTC?
With GBTC , you pay $100 for $40 worth of bitcoin 
why would anyone logically buy that product and in USD !
Hi @Zerbib Thanks for taking my comments in the spirit they are intended 
Thereās some misunderstandings here, Iāve possibly not worded things in the best way myself. Iāll cover my main points - what is the benefit of paying the 1.49% fee for the ETP - there is no diversification within the ETP, you are focusing on a sole crypto coin, in this case BTC, the risk isnāt avoided, you are simply assigning your trust to 21shares who themselves use Coinbase as the holding party, therefore using Coinbases security setup which is entirely accessible to us without paying the 1.49% fee.
21shares themselves state there may be a gap between market rate and the NAV - at the time I wrote my post above, there was a gap, and it worked out at $14.06 - that was checking the price on 21shares themselves, and also morningstar for the ETP price, and Coinbase plus Crypto for the market rates. GBP is simply another false positive, as there is no FX conversion fee in Coinbase. I havenāt checked again to see if there is a gap or not right now as thatās not the point - the point is the price you pay for the ETP on any given day could be better than market, the same as market, or worse than market and given how volatile crypto can be that is highly likely.
SIPP may be a genuine positive, I donāt know too much about SIPPs as I donāt have one, I need to research that and see what benefits/negatives there are. I find it odd they do not mention SIPP as an advantage in the marketing or in the FAQ through, thatās
I got the 1.49% daily rate from the FAQs but it looks like I misunderstood it - as you say, its a daily fee accruing to an annual rate of 1.49%, my apologies for my mistake.
1.49% annually is certainly far more reasonable, but its still an additional overhead that I am struggling to see any genuine actual benefit from. Certainly not the actual purchasing, as you can buy dips from Coinbase rather than a summary figure from the ETP they term as the āfair priceā and not risk that there may/may not be a negative NAV at that point in time, not the alleged security which is the sole benefit they list as an advantage to using a crypto exchange directly - they arenāt offering anything we canāt setup as an individual account in Coinbase and simply pay Coinbases fees rather than Coinbase + 21shares fees.
If it works for you, great - but personally I cannot see any real advantage to handing a fee (even as low as 1.49% annually) to a middleman who isnt offering me anything I cannot do directly myself without the additional overhead.
(Off to educate myself on SIPPs as that may be a genuine differentiator)
No, I checked the price of the ABTC ETP at the time of the post on 21shares plus Morningstar, and compared to the market rate I can buy BTC at the same time on Coinbase and Crypto. There was a $14.06 gap, the ABTC price is fixed daily at the end of the day (they dont specify which time - crypto is trading 24/7 but the ETP isnt, another area significant price differences can creep in - I often make most of my profit on crypto while I sleep!)
Probably worth me saying something more positive too - if a person is genuinely intimidated by crypto, or doesnāt want to spend the time learning the basics of crypto wallets and trading than yes 21shares is a good solution with a reasonable price. I just personally feel wallets and crypto trading are now sufficiently easy to setup and use that the fee can be avoided - but I absolutely agree that what works for me might not be the right answer for others
Thanks for you honest answer Jim1!
Look, at the end if you feel more comfortable buying crypto directly, no one is suggesting you stop, this is just an easy option for those who have honest IT issues. Look at gold etf, itās so easy to have it in your portfolio, why would you want to buy gold directly as a retail investor, the etf route is just simpler.
If you donāt have sipp, I strongly recommend you research into it as you seem to be type to make decent profits and it would be a shame to pay them in taxes.
The GBP is in my honest opinion a massive plus, HL charges Ā£49 for any usd listed stocks you trade in your gbp account and thatās huge draw back, with a GBP quotation, there are no surprises of added costs from your broker. Hence why the requestā¦
I can meet you in the middle there definitely Its a good product for those not comfortable with self trading crypto.
Iād like to see the option. However, Iāve held various cryptos for years very happily in my Ledger Nano which i very rarely plug into anything and use the remote app to check values. I have no need for an ETP, except for the same exposure as gold which is quite difficult to sell physically without taking a hit on a vendor charge.
Using a Trezor or Ledger Nano is very easy. Itās an encrypted USB stick which you can monitor you wallets from. The only thing is you should update the firmware once a year.
Guys, you are all forgetting that you can park ETP in your SIPP accountS! Please do not forget these benefits as opposed to talking about cold storage that the majority of us here would not really understand as itās not to everyoneās reach using ledger and Trezor , besides they cost $88 eachā¦surely the option is clear with a GBP ETP?
Iām very much for this vote and have been a holder of one of 21shares ETPs for around a year now which is held in my SIPP elsewhere.
21shares (formerly Amun AG) is a regulated Swiss company who have a number of different ETPs (exchange traded products) allowing for investors to buy a security that tracks prices of cryptocurrencies.
One in particular, HODL, invests in the top 5 cryptocurrencies by market cap size, so you donāt have to pick one in particular. Iāve bought this in my pension elsewhere and itās done very well up till now.
I find the option to invest in a product that selects a basket of cryptos for me a great advantage and one that retail investors would appreciate greatly if given access to. Many investors find it hard to navigate and purchase crypto currencies in the traditional ways via wallets and exchanges. 21shares makes it a lot easier and itās handy to have your crypto investments held alongside your other investments to give you a good perspective of your allocations and exposures.
It would be great to have these options in Freetrade.
21Shares Crypto Basket Index (CH0445689208)
Others they offer:
21Shares Ripple XRP ETP (CH0454664043)
21Shares Bitcoin Cash ETP (CH0475552201)
21Shares Bitwise Select 10 Large Cap Crypto Index (CH0475986318)
21Shares Bitcoin ETP (CH0454664001)
21Shares Ethereum ETP (CH0454664027)
21Shares Bitcoin Suisse ETP (CH0496484640)
21Shares Binance BNB ETP (CH0496454155)
21Shares Tezos Staking ETP (CH0491507486)
21Shares Short Bitcoin ETP (CH0514065058)
Sygnum Platform Winners Index ETP (CH0508793459)
thats great to hear David,!we love these products and they have made peopleās life so easy using your broker until this year! It turns out that in the UK, the regulator has banned them from any retail investors access, so now we all go via unregulated routes to invest in cryptoā¦ you have to admire the UK regulator for that!
