The first application for a Bitcoin ETF was filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2013 by the tech and crypto entrepreneurs Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. But regulators had too many concerns about volatility, price manipulation, and liquidity to bless it, even as similar products traded in Europe and Canada in ensuing years.

Those worries appear to have faded in light of a new approach and a new SEC chairman. Sapir’s ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF tracks Bitcoin futures instead of holding the cryptocurrency itself, as the Winklevii (and others) once proposed, allowing it to trade under the same rules that mutual funds follow and thereby offer investors greater protections.

Sapir co-founded ProShares in 1997, close to the dawn of the now $7 trillion U.S. ETF industry, and the company now oversees more than $68 billion in assets. His Bitcoin ETF tapped into pent-up demand from investors who want exposure to cryptocurrency without the inconvenience of mining it and the ups and downs of having it in their portfolios. (Bitcoin’s last three full-year returns were a 74% loss followed by gains of 95% and 305%.) Sapir already has competition: Currently there are about a half-dozen pending applications for similar futures-based products in front of the SEC.