Wall Street launches new ways to bet on bitcoin

For years, bitcoin won by being boring.

Investors weren't able to do all that much with it besides buy and hold it. But that was precisely why the world's largest cryptocurrency was valuable.

It was a commodity, like gold — or corn. It didn't get too fancy on its offerings. In fact, bitcoin's core team of developers has intentionally moved as slowly as possible on everything that touches the base blockchain specifically to avoid breaking things. That's why many of crypto's more cavalier coders headed to other blockchains to tinker and do things like build decentralized applications.

The approach worked. Traders poured their money into bitcoin not just because it was the OG coin but also because the network was robust and reliable, and they knew what they were getting. As solana reported hack after hack, bitcoin didn't really change. The asset was volatile, but aside from a major system upgrade that took four years to design and green-light, bitcoin kept its status as the world's biggest cryptocurrency by market cap by sticking to the status quo.

But times are changing for the original coin.

Developers are increasingly building on bitcoin's base blockchain in unexpected ways. Wall Street is also decking the coin out with all its familiar trappings such as exchange-traded fund wrappers and allowing traders to hedge positions and make leveraged bets.

In January, spot bitcoin ETFs began trading, which opened the door to more mainstream investors. Last week, options on those spot crypto products finally started to go live on the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange. CBOE Global Markets is also set to list its first cash-settled bitcoin ETF options Dec. 2.

Creating this new margin framework around bitcoin means that both retail traders