Industry insiders said the SEC and some asset managers were discussing “key technical details” related to the listing on US exchanges of a spot Bitcoin ETF proposed by asset managers. To date, the commission has never given the green light to any exchange-traded product trading cryptocurrency, instead postponing decisions on applications for as long as possible. Reports released by the SEC in November do indeed indicate that commissioners met separately with representatives from BlackRock and Grayscale. As a reminder, these asset managers, as well as Hashdex, ARK 21Shares, Invesco Galaxy, VanEck and Fidelity, have also filed to list a BTC or Ether (ETH) spot ETF.
“The expected approval of the ETF will be positive news for the cryptocurrency market, which will likely lead to significant growth,” said Adam Berker, senior legal counsel at Mercuryo. “Once the ETFs are given the go-ahead, a broader range of TradFi investors will have easier access to crypto assets. Because such With major institutions like Fidelity and BlackRock endorsing the product, significant institutional capital is expected to flow into the market.”
It is unclear whether the SEC will ultimately decide to approve a spot Bitcoin ETF. Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffarth suggested that if the commission decides to back one, it could move to approve ETFs from multiple firms simultaneously in January. Many in the crypto space and beyond have criticized SEC Chairman Gary Gensler for his approach to treating certain tokens as securities. The Commission is pursuing legal action against Terraform Labs, Ripple, Coinbase and Binance.
