The SEC‘s approval of the first spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds Wednesday will open up crypto investing to a wider audience while boosting the industry.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s landmark decision came after years of waiting for cryptocurrency advocates and hope from large institutions like BlackRock and Fidelity that their applications would get approved. The development is good news for bitcoin and other digital assets, which have been surging in the past few months as the decision was pending.

Some experts and investors see the SEC decision as a watershed moment for the crypto market and only see the nascent industry as growing from here.

“This opens up huge possibilities and inflows from millions of people and even institutions,” Alex Konanykhin, the founder and CEO of Unicoin, told the Washington Examiner. “It really opens the floodgates for investment into bitcoin.”

Brian Marks, executive director of the University of New Haven’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program, explained that an investment in a bitcoin ETF differs from just buying bitcoin because the firm that runs the ETF, for instance, BlackRock, owns the cryptocurrency itself.

“They own it, and then they issue shares to people who are interested in buying and partaking in a cryptocurrency, bitcoin-type play,” Marks told the Washington Examiner. “So it’s not a direct ownership interest; it’s an indirect ownership interest, which then that indirect ownership, that ETF, gets managed by BlackRock.”

“There is a level of trust, faith, and confidence that it’s an instrument, an ETF, that is being operated by a recognized financial institution,” he added.

The price of bitcoin, surprisingly for some, didn’t pop too much after the SEC cleared the way for the ETFs. Bitcoin has largely remained steady. As of Thursday afternoon, the value of a bitcoin was up only about 1.3% to $46,300.

One reason why bitcoin prices didn’t explode immediately after the SEC announcement is that the decision was already priced into the markets — basically, many major bitcoin investors expected that the ETFs would be approved, so the decision didn’t come as a major surprise and the move was already largely baked into the headline price of the asset before the announcement.

“My view is, I think it was capitalized into the price for the most part that this was going to be approved,” Marks said.

But despite the lack of very short-term growth, the move bodes well for bitcoin prices heading into the new year and beyond.

James Lawrence of Siesta Markets told the Washington Examiner that the move will cause much more investment in bitcoin, which will prove to be a boon for those invested in bitcoin and the crypto industry at large.

“The inflow, the amount of capital in the space now, is about to increase exponentially when you have these big money managers allowing people to invest large amounts of money into bitcoin at once,” Lawrence said, noting that the move further legitimizes cryptocurrency in the United States.

But the most recent decision has bigger implications beyond bitcoin alone. Konanykhin said it could signal future approvals for ETFs tied to ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, or other digital assets like Ripple.

The price of ether, the coin tied to ethereum, rose rapidly after the bitcoin ETF approvals. It is up a whopping 16.7% in just the past five days alone. Similarly, XRP, the coin tied to Ripple, has risen more than 6.6% in the past five days.

Still, notably, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said in a statement announcing the approvals that the green light for bitcoin ETFs should “in no way signal the Commission’s willingness to approve listing standards for crypto asset securities.”

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

While Biden administration regulators haven’t been known to be particularly friendly toward the crypto space, crypto evangelists are still taking the latest SEC decision as a major win, with some predicting major price gains in the coming months and years.

“It’s pretty monumental; it officially kind of makes digital assets legitimate in the eyes of the U.S. government,” Lawrence said.