Coverage of the Winklevoss Twins ETF venture is causing media outlets to up their orders for ink. Two major news outlets -- The New York Times Dealbook column and the Wall Street Journal both addressed the Winklevii ETF project this morning. One as a serious news item, the other as satire.

Satire first.

For its DealBook column The Times' editors reprint a satirical column from Peter Thal Larson. Larson is a Reuters employee blogging for that publisher's BreakingViews Web site (blog?).

Larson mockingly suggests that the great, overlooked idea in the ETF industry is a fund investing in Dollars. He suggests the "Breakingviews Dollar Trust". Click through to read more about the "Social Nitwits," but be warned that article's wit stops with the headline and the rest of the piece could be called inscrutable.

More seriously the WSJ's Liam Denning points out that there is absolutely nothing reliable about a ETF that relies on a virtual currency. His bottom line:

But for retail buyers, taking on a bitcoin ETF looks closer right now to gambling than to investment or hedging.

Denning eloquently mocked the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust. Denning says the ETF is proof that the push to make everything tradeable via ETFs is hurting investors by encouraging them to expose themselves to expensive, and sometimes illiquid, markets.

Though Denning says virtual currencies shouldn't be completely dismissed as they are too recent a phenomenon to illicit trust from investors. Even gold ETFs, which are struggling right now, are better than the Bitcoin ETF, Denning says, because gold's value is based on something more concrete, unlike the bit coin, whose founder is unknown.

To read more, visit the Wall Street Journal and Reuters' BreakingViews from whence the New York Times Dealbook coverage derived. 

Correction: The MFWire made a hash of interpreting Peter Thal Larson's satirical take on the Winklevoss ETF on our first go round. The article above is our current best guess on what he meant. Please forgive us, neither Dutch nor London English as interpreted by editors in Hong Kong is our first language.

Edited by: Casey Quinlan


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