PARIS – The issuer of the Spot Bitcoin ETF on Tuesday said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is unlikely to approve such a virtual currency product. ether.
Regulators have set a deadline for completing their review of the Ether ETF in late May. This comes after the SEC postponed the original deadline for a decision on the Ether ETF application in March.
The following companies black rock Fidelity and VanEck, which issued spot bitcoin ETFs this year, are awaiting approval for their ether products.
Some issuers are not confident that the SEC will greenlight Ether applications.
“We were the first company in the U.S. to apply for Ethereum, and we [Ark Invest CEO] “I think Cathie Wood will probably be the first candidate to be rejected in May,” Van Eck CEO Jean Van Eck said at a crypto event in Paris, France. He spoke to CNBC’s Arjun Karpal at Paris Blockchain Week.
Ark Invest did not immediately respond to a request from CNBC for comment.
“The way the legal process works is that regulators will give comments on your application, which has been happening for weeks before Bitcoin ETFs came out, and now as far as Ethereum is concerned. Pings are decreasing,” Van Eck added. .
Enthusiasm for Ether ETFs has been growing among the crypto community since the SEC approved the first Spot Bitcoin ETF in January. However, the SEC has indicated that it may be less enthusiastic about approving such investment products.
SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has previously emphasized that the SEC’s view is that “the vast majority of crypto assets are investment contracts and therefore subject to federal securities laws.”
This complicates matters for Ether ETFs.
“We are watching the Ethereum decision very closely,” CoinShares CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti told CNBC on Tuesday. “CoinShares did not participate in the Bitcoin ETF race until three months prior to approval, but managed to qualify at the last minute.”
He was equally pessimistic about the chances of such approval in the near term.
CoinShares is not one of the companies considered for an Ether ETF in the US
“I don’t think anything has been approved this time of year,” he said, suggesting it could be difficult to get SEC approval for proof-of-stake, a blockchain-specific protocol.
Bitcoin is backed by another protocol known as proof of work, in which volunteer miners verify transactions and mint new tokens.
The SEC does not take issue with proof of work from a securities law perspective.