SEC Delays Decision On Bitcoin ETFs By One River And WisdomTree

By Kevin • March 22, 2022 11:28 pm • Comments

The SEC has recently announced the delay of its decision on whether it would approve the Bitcoin ETFs for exchange listing from WisdomTree and One River.

The SEC was originally scheduled to either approve or reject the listings on an earlier date, but it has now been rescheduled to May 15 at the latest.

This was not the first time that the SEC has rejected or delayed proposals for the listings of Bitcoin ETFs which has been gathering a lot of institutional interest recently.

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Back in February, the committee had delayed Grayscale’s proposed ETF due to possible concern about manipulation or fraud despite Grayscale already being one of the largest digital asset managers.

FinanceMagnates reports the details:

The SEC delayed Grayscale’s proposed ETF in February, which is another spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund. In a statement released on February 4, the SEC is concerned about how Grayscale will fend manipulation and fraud. Grayscale is the largest digital asset manager.

Earlier in 2021, Grayscale asked to convert its GBPTC shares into a spot bitcoin ETF. This is the second time the SEC is delaying their decision to Grayscale’s application.

The SEC has already rejected several ETF applications from WisdomTree, Krypton, Fidelity and SkyBridge. In October 2021, the SEC approved 2 bitcoin future-based funds: ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF and Valkyrie Bitcoin Strategy ETF.

Despite the rapid growth of Bitcoin as an institutional asset as well as the fact that the overall crypto industry has already surpassed $2 trillion last year, the SEC has still not approved a Bitcoin ETF yet.

Crypto asset ETFs would be a key financial instrument for more traditional financial firms to gain market exposure to the crypto markets so this has been disappointing for many fund managers.

However, Fidelity has been able to launched Bitcoin ETFs in Canada so far which indicates that investors may need to look at getting access to foreign markets in order to gain exposure.

Many are speculating for the reasons of the previous rejections of ETFs and are criticizing that the committee has been halting or slowing down a lot of progress in the industry as of lately.

The criticism also extends to some members of Congress which have recently sent a letter to the SEC listing their concerns over the SEC’s recent regulatory actions.

CoinDesk concludes:

“The Commission finds that it is appropriate to designate a longer period within which to take action on the proposed rule change so that it has sufficient time to consider the proposed rule change and any comments received,” the SEC said in each of the filings.

A decision on One River’s proposal has been postponed to April 3, and on WisdomTree’s to May 15. The SEC had previously denied WisdomTree’s application in December, but the fund manager had made changes and resubmitted.

Up to now, the SEC has either outright denied or delayed decisions on all spot bitcoin ETFs.

Prior to the SEC’s announcements on Monday, its most recent actions were its rejections of applications from NYDIG and Global X last month.

Investors expect the approval of Bitcoin ETFs and other crypto ETFs will greatly accelerate the institutional adoption of crypto to be used both for their storage of value as well as their utility.

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