ETFs
SEC Approves 8 Spot Ether ETFs in Landmark Decision
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has approved eight spot Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the country. In a landmark decision late Thursday, the financial watchdog approved Forms 19b-4 for ETFs from BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale, Bitwise, VanEck, Ark, Invesco Galaxy and Franklin Templeton.
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BlackRock, Bitwise, Grayscale, Van Eck, Ark 21Shares, Fidelity, Franklin and Invesco had previously amended their 19b-4 filings with the SEC to eliminate provisions relating to staking, a crypto rewards system. By doing so, these financial companies hoped to obtain approval more easily. 19b-4 filings are documents that national exchanges like NASDAQ or the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) submit to the SEC to request approval for listing new products on their trading platforms.
The crypto industry welcomed the SEC’s decision, hailing it as a revolutionary development.
Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, a decentralized blockchain oracle network built on Ethereum, said in an email that the decision proves that capital markets are now getting involved in the crypto industry.
“One of the most important aspects of this ETF approval is its focus on the potential of smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps), which are critical use cases for Ethereum,” did he declare.
Likewise, Paul Marino, chief revenue officer at Granite Stockssaid in an email that the SEC approval is further validation that cryptocurrencies and blockchain are real, that they are a big part of the future of investing, and that they are here to stay.
“Those who make ‘fart rock’ statements regarding Bitcoin and others who continue to say ‘I just don’t understand’ when referring to crypto would benefit from doing some research into how asset tokenization will change what we know about investing today,” Marino said.
This latest move follows the SEC’s approval earlier this year of spot Bitcoin ETFswhat pushed Bitcoin at an all-time high. The approval of the Ether ETF spot application is a historic moment for the crypto industry, as financial giants have been waiting for it for years.
Crypto asset trading firm QCP Capital had predicted earlier today, there could be a potential 60% increase in the price of Ether. He suggests that Ether could reach around $6,000 if the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approves Ethereum spot ETFs.
Meanwhile, the crypto market did not jump immediately following the news. Bitcoin was down 2%, trading around $67,000, while Ether was up 1%, hovering around $3,800 late Thursday.
SEC approval follows US House of Representatives votes in favor of crypto bill entitled “Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act”. The bill would effectively classify cryptocurrency as a commodity and not a security, and therefore exempt it from securities regulation. It would also determine oversight of cryptocurrencies and whether they should be regulated by the SEC or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). However, it still needs to be passed by the Senate and signed into law by the president.