The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is required to give an official decision regarding a new bitcoin-based exchange-traded fund (ETF) application submitted by ARK Invest.
The Window for Decision is Closing on the SEC
ARK is simply one of eight companies that have submitted such applications over the past few months, the others being Bitwise, VanEck, BlackRock, and WisdomTree to name a few. The application from ARK was submitted as far back as mid-May of this year.
While initially it was decided that mid-August would be the time in which the SEC would finally decide on the application, the financial agency is within its legal boundaries to extend the decision deadline by as much as 240 days. As a result, the final choice date could potentially extend to as late as January of next year. For all the others, the SEC has until March of 2024 to make decisions.
In a recent letter, Grayscale – one of the world’s largest bitcoin and crypto custody platforms – said the SEC should be fair when making its final choices regarding all the ETF applications at hand, and that it should likely do so for all of them at the same time. The document stated:
[T]he SEC’s actions related to bitcoin ETFs should be [taken] in a fair and orderly manner. As a disclosure-based regulator, the SEC should not pick winners and losers.
Up to this point, while several bitcoin ETF applications have been submitted, the SEC has unceremoniously rejected all of them, the main reason being that crypto is an unregulated institution and the financial agency is concerned about investor safety. Many of the names listed above are companies that have tried hard to have spot bitcoin ETF applications accepted by the SEC in the past, though every time, they’ve come up short for one reason or another.
Not long ago, Grayscale sued the SEC for outright dismissing the company’s own application. A judge (Neomi Rao) via a court of appeals has since asked the agency for clarification on why it was so quick to say “no” given it’s offered the greenlight to futures-based ETFs in the past. The judge said:
It seems like it’s fine for an agency to say OK, we need some more information, but it seems there’s quite a bit of information here on how these markets work together, and the SEC has not offered any explanation… that the petitioners here are wrong.
Why So Quick to Say “No?”
Several players in the industry have applauded Grayscale’s attempts at garnering clarification. Purpose Investments CEO Som Seif explained:
They’re forcing the SEC through a legal process, to provide clarity. I think that that’s [an important] thing because through the regulatory and legal process, they will be forced to give very specific reasons and back those reasons.
