Since the beginning of this year, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissions have been actively involved in the digital currency space with certain institutions seeking the approval of a Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund. In addition to this, the recent comment of Robert Jackson Jr – a former SEC commissioner – that it’s just a matter of time before an exchange-traded fund for Bitcoin (BTC) gets a green light, has dragged a lot of attention to the regulatory agency.
As per reports, the U.S. SEC has started the process of considering a rule change for listing the proposal for a Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund submitted by Bitwise Asset Management and NYSE Arca on the 11th of February this year.
Bitwise Bitcoin (BTC) ETF Application Published in Federal Register
The BTC ETF application by the asset management firm was published in the Federal Register on the 15th of February. This leaves the regulatory agency with forty-five days to make an initial verdict to reject, approve, or extend the proposal date further. However, in total, the US SEC has a period of 240 days to make a final verdict on whether to reject or approve the proposal.
The proposal for the BTC exchange-traded fund was initially submitted by Bitwise Asset Management in January this year. However, it couldn’t find its way to the Federal Register as a result of the U.S. government shutdown. But the situation of the event has changed now, as the SEC has now put the application under review.
As stated in the initial registration, the exchange-traded fund would track the Bitcoin (BTC) Total Return Index of Bitwise, which takes the value of BTC and any other meaningful hard fork into account. Moreover, what is unique about the BTC ETF application of Bitwise is that the firm wants is fund to be supported by spot prices from trading platforms and physically settled futures contracts.
This is not the same as any other Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund that was filed before, as previous exchange-traded funds were supported with cash-settled contracts. John Hyland – the global head of ETFs at Bitwise – painted an optimistic image and seemed very hopeful that the BTC ETF will be approved by the SEC.
In a statement, Hyland said: “While there can be no assurance that the 19b-4 application will be approved or the Securities and Exchange Commission will review and ultimately accelerate the registration statement, we are optimistic that this year should be the year that a Bitcoin (BTC) ETF launches.”
In the past, the U.S SEC has rejected a lot of BTC ETF applications. Nevertheless, since the statement of SEC commissioner Robert Jackson, another commissioner at the SEC – Hester Peirce – has also come out optimistically about the eventual approval of an exchange-traded fund for Bitcoin (BTC).
Bitcoin (BTC) Price Today – BTC / USD
The news around exchange-traded funds for Bitcoin (BTC) has dragged a lot of attention form digital currency fans all over the world that hope that the approval of a BTC ETF will result in an event that will help take the values of the digital currency out form the present bear market.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin (BTC) is traded at $3,695 after an increase of about one percent over the past twenty-four hours. The current market cap of the digital currency is $63.7 billion and its trading volume over the past twenty-four hours is $3.93 billion.
