Switzerland approves first retail Bitcoin ETF; BBIT to list on SIX in November

Switzerland's financial regulator FINMA has approved the country's first Bitcoin ETF that ordinary retail investors can buy, Cointelegraph reported on Friday. The fund, the Bitcoin Fund ETF (ticker BBIT) from BIT Asset Management, is expected to start trading on the SIX Swiss Exchange in November 2026.

What makes this one different

Investors in Europe can already buy Bitcoin through exchange-traded products, but most of those are ETPs: debt notes issued by a company, which means the buyer carries the issuer's credit risk as well as Bitcoin's price risk. BBIT is set up as a Swiss collective investment scheme under Swiss fund law:

• It holds Bitcoin directly, not a promise from the issuer.
• Its assets are kept separate from the management company's and ring-fenced for investors, so they are protected if the manager fails.
• It is open to retail investors, but the public offering is limited to Switzerland.

FINMA has allowed funds that hold a basket of cryptocurrencies since 2021. This is the first fund built on Bitcoin alone that it has approved, a step it linked to Bitcoin's longer trading history and higher trading volume than other coins. The regulator said other fund providers have also applied for Bitcoin ETFs, and it classed BBIT among "other funds for alternative investments", a category it treats as carrying particular risk. FINMA also stressed that Bitcoin stays highly volatile even inside an approved fund.

No management fee has been announced yet.

Where Bitcoin trades today

Bitcoin was at about $81,170 at 6:40am Pakistan time on Friday, roughly Rs 2.25 crore at the interbank dollar rate, according to our Bitcoin price page. That is down from about $82,800 on Thursday morning, when it failed to break above $84,800 (our story). Ether was near $2,384 on the Ethereum page.

Can investors in Pakistan buy it?

Not directly. The Swiss offering is restricted to Switzerland, and Pakistani residents moving money abroad for investment face State Bank of Pakistan foreign exchange rules. Any profit on a foreign holding is also taxable for a Pakistani resident.

For anyone holding foreign assets, our capital gains tax calculator and currency converter help with the rupee arithmetic.