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More than a dozen financial firms are involved in new bitcoin exchange-traded funds that began trading on Thursday, but one of the world’s largest fund issuers and money managers still won’t touch the cryptocurrency.
A Vanguard spokeswoman told CNBC that the asset management giant has no plans to create its own bitcoin ETF or even offer funds from other issuers on its trading platform.
“While we continually evaluate our brokerage offering and evaluate new product introductions to the market, spot bitcoin ETFs will not be available for purchase on the Vanguard platform. We also have no plans to offer Vanguard bitcoin ETFs or other cryptocurrency-related products,” the statement said.
“Our perspective is that these products are inconsistent with our offerings focused on asset classes such as stocks, bonds and cash that Vanguard believes are the building blocks of a well-balanced long-term investment portfolio,” the statement continued.
Vanguard is one of the two dominant players in the US ETF market. Its arch-rival BlackRock entered the bitcoin space with iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) on Thursday.
Based just outside of Philadelphia, Vanguard has built a reputation as a low-cost, more conservative investment manager. Led by its founder Jack Bogle, Vanguard has helped reduce costs for investors since the 1970s by introducing passive stock index funds that tracked the broader markets and outperformed highly paid active managers on average. She also kept reducing her fees.
Bogle died in 2019, and Vanguard now oversees more than $8 trillion in assets, but it still operates on many of its founder’s more cautious views.
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