ETFs
Bitcoin Is Above $70,000, Ether Jumps On ETF Approval Speculation
Bitcoin and Ether – the two largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization – thrived on Tuesday on speculation that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would approve Ethereum spot ETFs this week.
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The financial watchdog will decide whether to approve or deny Van Eck’s spot Ethereum ETF application on Thursday and Ark 21Shares’ Ethereum ETF application on Friday.
In the meantime, Bloomberg Intelligence ETF Analysts Eric Balchunas and James Seyffart increased their chances of approval for Ethereum ETFs from 25% to 75%. Balchunas posted on that the SEC “could do a 180” due to growing political pressure. Crypto has become a political topic during this election year, with a presidential candidate Donald Trump makes several pro-crypto comments statements during a campaign in May. Additionally, President Joe Biden is also taking a pro-crypto position to gain support from the crypto community.
As of Tuesday morning, Bitcoin was trading at $70,000, with a jump of almost 6%, while Ether was hovering around $3,700, a gain of more than 22%. according to CoinMartketCap. Ether’s market cap of $440 billion has now exceeds that of the payments giant Mastercard, valued at $427 billion.
Ether is the native token of the Ethereum blockchain network. The network hosts thousands of decentralized financial applications and services, where investors trade, borrow and lend through automated software protocols rather than traditional banks or financial institutions.
Ethereum has unique features that Bitcoin lacks and which enhance its usability. For example, Bitcoin’s blockchain network cannot be used as a platform for decentralized applications because it was not originally designed for applications to be built directly on its base layer.
This is part of the reason financial giants like BlackRock and Fidelity are eager to launch Ether funds, as they see Ether ETFs as a way to expand crypto’s investor base. In March, Launch of BlackRock its first fund tokenized on the Ethereum blockchain. BlackRock has always mentioned that its digital asset strategy involves the launch of ETFs and the tokenization of financial assets.
During this time, Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein has resigned Monday, just a few weeks later the company withdrew its application for an Ethereum futures ETF. Head of strategy at Goldman Sachs, Peter Mintzberg will become its new CEO in August.