SEC postpones ruling on Grayscale’s ETH ETF application until next year

What’s new? The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has postponed the date for ruling on investment firm Grayscale’s application to convert its Ethereum trust into a spot exchange-traded fund (ETF). The deadline has been pushed back 45 days, to January 25. The trust was launched in March 2019, its managers voluntarily began filing reports with the SEC in October 2020, and a request to convert the exchange-traded product was filed three years later.

Source: Twitter.com

What else is known? Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE) manages 2,5% of Ethereum’s circulating supply of about $5 billion, making the trust the largest holder of the asset among investment vehicles.

Applications to launch spot ETH ETFs in the United States have also been received from Hashdex, BlackRock, Bitwise, Fidelity, VanEck, Invesco, and Galaxy (jointly), as well as ARK Invest and 21Shares (jointly). In mid-November, the deadline for Hashdex’s application was postponed. Meanwhile, on December 5, officials accepted applications from BlackRock and Bitwise, submitted jointly with the Nasdaq stock exchange.

Although no spot cryptocurrency ETF has yet been admitted to the local market, analysts already began to record an outflow of altcoin from exchanges on December 1: the index fell to its lowest level since June. At the same time, the largest over-the-counter addresses accumulated a record 41,03 million coins.

Despite the SEC’s decision to postpone it, the ETH exchange rate gained 3,5% per day. On Binance, it jumped to $2309 at the moment, which became the highest since May last year.

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In addition, Grayscale is awaiting approval for its application for a spot bitcoin ETF, which it also expects to launch through a trust conversion. The company has been trying to get SEC approval since October 2021 and in 2023 even won a court case that found the officials’ actions inconsistent and urged them to reconsider the application.

So far, only futures-based crypto-ETFs are allowed on the US market, but analysts note progress in the companies’ negotiations with the SEC to launch spot products. Thus, on December 5, BlackRock updated its application for BTC ETF, adding language about monitoring asset prices and anti-money laundering.

Experts expect a large-scale inflow of capital into the crypto market after the approval of spot products. Bernstein Bank predicted the BTC exchange rate to rise to $150 000 by 2025 if the condition is met. DeFiance Capital CEO Arthur Cheong believes that ETH will also be popular with investors and will rapidly grow in value.