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PARIS – Bitcoin spot exchange-traded fund issuers cast doubt on the short-term ability of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to approve such a product for the cryptocurrency ether.
The regulator has until the end of May to conclude its review of the ether ETF. That comes after the SEC in March delayed its original deadline for a decision on the ETH ETF application.
Word companies Black stones to Fidelity and VanEck, two companies that launched spot bitcoin ETFs this year, are awaiting approval for an ether product.
Some issuers are not confident that the SEC will give the green light to ether applications.
“We were also the first to register Ethereum in the US and we as well [Ark Invest CEO] Cathy Wood, I guess was first in line in May and probably got rejected,” VanEck CEO Jan Van Eck told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal at the Paris Blockchain Week crypto event in Paris, France .
Ark Invest was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
Van Eck added: “The legal process that happens is that regulators will comment on your application, and that happened weeks before the Bitcoin ETF – and right now, the amount pins are dropping as far as Ethereum is concerned.”
Enthusiasm has grown in the crypto community for an ether ETF, since the SEC approved the first bitcoin spot ETF in January. But the SEC has signaled that it may not be willing to approve one. such investment products.
SEC Chairman Gary Gensler previously emphasized that “the majority of crypto assets are investment contracts and are therefore subject to federal securities laws,” in the SEC’s view.
This further complicates matters for ether ETFs.
“We are watching Ethereum’s decision very closely,” CoinShares CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti told CNBC on Tuesday. “CoinShares didn’t enter the race for a bitcoin ETF until three months before approval, and we tried to qualify at the last minute.”
He was equally pessimistic about the possibility of achieving such approval in the short term.
“I don’t see anything approved this time of year,” he noted, suggesting it may be difficult to gain SEC approval for proof-of-stake — a blockchain-specific protocol.
Bitcoin is underpinned by another protocol, called proof of work, where volunteer miners validate transactions and mint new tokens.
The SEC is not interested in proof of work from a securities law standpoint.
