Bitcoin Price Index Created By Winklevoss Brothers

There is a new financial index on the block and it’s called, the Winkdex.  Yes, you’ve guessed it, it comes from the minds of the Winklevoss brothers.  The Winkdex was released publicly Wednesday 19 February and it provides a regularly updated figure for the price of the virtual currency, Bitcoin. 

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss announced the creation of the Winkdex in a regulatory filing which they made on Wednesday to the Securities and Exchange Commission in relation to the Bitcoin exchange-traded fund they first applied to create back in the summer of 2013.

This new filing shows that the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust is moving closer to regulatory approval despite scepticism by some investor circles. The Winklevoss brothers now want to start the fund later in the year and in doing so, they will create the first Bitcoin E.T.F.  The brothers and their company, Math-Based Asset Services, are being represented by lawyers at Katten Muchin Rosenman who, in the past, have helped some of the most popular E.T.F.’s through regulatory processes. “We’ve been very encouraged with how responsive and deferential the S.E.C. has been to the application,” Cameron Winklevoss said.

The Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust is set to trade on public stock exchanges. The fund will collaborate with other financial institutions to buy and sell Bitcoin daily, to remain in line with the number of outstanding shares of the E.T.F. The net asset value of the fund will then be adjusted at the close of each trading day, based on the value of the Winkdex.

The E.T.F. is aiming to provide a simple way for investors to stake the future price movement of Bitcoin.  Those investors will then pay a management fee for the work that the Winklevosses’ firm will do to maintain and secure the Bitcoin held by the E.T.F.

The Winkdex will compete with a growing number of companies providing data on the virtual currency industry. The most popular index for the price of a Bitcoin is operated by CoinDesk, a news and information website.

[Image via thecrimson]

SOURCE: http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/dealbook/2014/02/19/before-a-bitcoin-fund-comes-a-price-index/