One River Asset Management has filed an application with the SEC for a carbon-neutral bitcoin ETF.
One River holds more than $600 million in BTC and is backed by billionaire Alan Howard.
Most interestingly, however, its advisors include Jay Clayton, the former chairman of the Security and Exchange Commission when the agency refused to approve all applications received regarding the issuance of bitcoin ETFs.
Thus Clayton now actually supports the issuance of a bitcoin ETF after having denied it for years when he was head of the SEC.
After all, since he left the agency last year, he went to take up the very position of cryptocurrency advisor for this hedge fund.
As stated in the official document submitted to the SEC, One River’s ETF should be called One River Carbon Neutral Bitcoin Trust, and its shares would be traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
The Trust’s objective is to seek to replicate the price performance of bitcoin using as a benchmark the MVIS One River Carbon Neutral Bitcoin Index, constructed using bitcoin price feeds from eligible spot markets, and the volume-weighted average price (VWMP) calculated over 20 intervals, in three-minute moving increments, and with adjustments to reflect the current spot price of carbon credits needed to offset the estimated carbon footprint attributable to each BTC.
Thus, the index on which the ETF would be masked is designed to reflect the performance of the US dollar price of bitcoin, but on a carbon-neutral basis.
To achieve this, the Trust intends to offset the carbon footprint associated with bitcoin by purchasing and retiring carbon credits, which are required to account for the estimated carbon emissions associated with the mining of BTC held by the Trust in the index calculation.
Delaware Trust Company will be the Trustee of the Trust, while the custody of the BTC will be entrusted to Coinbase Custody.
They will use Moss Earth to purchase MCO2 tokens, which represent “certified reductions in greenhouse gas emissions”.
One River CEO Eric Peters said:
“There’s a lot of talk about the carbon footprint. We decided it’s time to stop talking and start doing something about it”.
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