Note that this trust will almost assuredly be limited to accredited investors, which means those who make at least $250K a year or have a net worth over $1 million dollars.
Luckily, people with that much money are probably smart enough not to pay someone else to make transactions with bitcoins with NO ADDED VALUE.
As such, my guess is that the AUM for this trust will remain pedestrian and the price implications will only have to do with public sentiment and overreactions.
(bold added)
There is plenty of added value.
Until now, getting anywhere near a bitcoin was a tricky proposition, primarily because the two biggest bitcoin exchanges are outside the U.S. and unregulated.
"We incubated the BIT to alleviate the problems of direct bitcoin ownership, including having to wire money to newly established and potentially unregulated entities around the world," says SecondMarket Founder and CEO Barry Silbert.
Also the safety of not having to give all your personal info to these offshore exchanges, and also the convenience of not having to figure out and deal with Bitcoin wallets.
to quote Eric Vorhees:
YES!!!!!!!!! This is a long-awaited game changer. Why? Because institutional and wealthy investors who are interested in a Bitcoin position don't have to worry about wallets, storage, gox verification, hax0rs, etc. This is a professional, Wall St. level asset bringing Bitcoin exposure to the "real" financial world (and you know why I use quotes).
Everyone knew this would happen eventually. SecondMarket seized the opportunity and is an ideal firm to manage it.
For those who don't know, SecondMarket is an equity market for pre-IPO companies. Facebook and Twitter shares traded here before their IPO's. This will be big news in the morning.
