The United States Patent and Trademark Office awarded the patent for Exchange-Traded-Product (ETP) to Winklevoss IP LLP on June 19, 2018. An application for the patent was submitted in November 27, 2017.
Since December 2017, Winklevoss brothers have won six more patents related to cryptocurrencies and stocks, excluding the one discussed above. Other co-inventors of the ETP include Evan Louis Greebel, Kathleen Hill Moriarty, and Gregory Elias Xethalis. In the patent, the crypto tokens being discussed for the ETF ranges from the popular Bitcoin (BTC) to lesser known cryptos such as BBQCoin.
An Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) is a tradable security that tracks a commodity, an index, bonds, or any other basket of assets. Unlike mutual funds, an ETF trades like a common stock on a stock exchange.
ETFs experience price changes throughout the day as they are bought and sold. The Winklevoss brothers submitted an application for a patented Bitcoin-based ETF to SEC in 2013. The SEC, however, rejected their application citing security regulations.
The SEC, at that time, said
“First, the exchange must have surveillance-sharing agreements with significant markets for trading the underlying commodity or derivatives on that commodity. And second, those markets must be regulated.”
Cryptocurrency investors are eagerly looking for the day when Bitcoin ETF would become a reality.