Teddy Fusaro, COO, Bitwise

The idea behind a bitcoin ETF is that it would offer an onramp for investors who want exposure to bitcoin but are uninterested in holding BTC themselves. In this episode of The Scoop, Bitwise COO Teddy Fusaro joins us to discuss the elusive bitcoin ETF.

Fusaro and The Block's Frank Chaparro talk about:

• The history of the bitcoin ETF movementi
• The reasons why regulators aren't keen on approving one, such as market manipulation and the lack of cross-exchange market surveillance
• How demand for a bitcoin ETF has translated into a premium for Grayscale's GBTC product and how traders can cash in on the premium
• Bitwise and why Fusaro views it as an asset-manager and educator in the crypto market that unearths "hard truths"

Fusaro, a longtime asset-management executive who would later rise to become Bitwise's president and CEO, was at the center of the firm's push to bring regulated bitcoin investment products to market at a time when the Securities and Exchange Commission had rejected every bitcoin ETF application put in front of it, including a proposal from Bitwise itself.

The conversation traces the history of those rejections and the SEC's recurring rationale, namely concerns about market manipulation and the absence of surveillance-sharing agreements across the fragmented, largely unregulated exchanges where bitcoin traded at the time. Fusaro discusses why regulators kept pointing to those structural gaps, and what would eventually need to change before a spot bitcoin ETF could win approval, a debate that would continue for several more years before the first such funds were approved in the United States.

The episode also digs into the dynamics around the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, GBTC, which for years traded at a persistent premium to its underlying net asset value because it offered one of the only ways for many investors to gain regulated bitcoin exposure, and how that premium created both opportunity and distortion for traders. Beyond the ETF debate, Fusaro talks about Bitwise's broader role in the industry as both an asset manager and a research-driven educator, an identity the firm built by publishing data-heavy reports meant to bring transparency to a market still shadowed by fraud and manipulation narratives.

The result is a snapshot of the pre-ETF-approval era of crypto investing, capturing the regulatory friction, market-structure debates, and institutional groundwork that would eventually pave the way for the spot bitcoin ETFs that launched years later. Fusaro also touches on how Bitwise was building out its research and index products in the meantime, positioning the firm to be ready whenever regulators finally opened the door.