After securing a legal victory against the SEC, Grayscale has compelled the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to reconsider their proposed Bitcoin ETF.
According to CoinDesk sources, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has begun discussions with the crypto investment fund provider Grayscale regarding their proposal for a Bitcoin spot ETF.
Earlier, in August, Grayscale won a legal case in the U.S. appellate court during their appeal against the SEC’s rejection of their Bitcoin ETF proposal in 2022. The company subsequently resubmitted the proposal to the SEC in October.
CoinDesk revealed that Grayscale has initiated discussions with two units within the SEC, namely the Division of Trading and Markets and the Division of Corporate Finance, although the specific details of the discussions remain unclear.
Grayscale’s Chief Legal Officer, Craig Salm, acknowledged that the company is working with regulatory authorities but did not provide additional details. However, Salm mentioned that Grayscale and other organizations submitting Bitcoin ETF proposals to the SEC, such as BlackRock and Fidelity, are making significant positive progress. He stated that it’s just a matter of time before one of them gets approval.
The price of Bitcoin on the morning of 11/09 surpassed the $36,000 threshold, setting a new peak for 2023 and also the highest since May 2022, before the market crashed due to the LUNA-UST incident. The world’s largest cryptocurrency has surged strongly since late October 2023, driven by positive information surrounding the approved Bitcoin spot ETF prospects.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, under the leadership of Chairman Gary Gensler, has not approved for any Bitcoin spot ETF proposals so far. Instead, they have only given the green light to products using futures of the world’s largest cryptocurrency. Mr. Gensler cites the ongoing prevalence of fraud and market manipulation in the cryptocurrency industry as the basis for the decision to reject such proposals.
However, that hasn’t stopped the Wall Street giants, including BlackRock, VanEck, Bitwise, WisdomTree, Valkyrie, Fidelity, Invesco, ARK Invest, Global X, Hashdex, and Franklin Templeton, from flooding the SEC with applications for Bitcoin spot ETFs. The commission has twice postponed making a decision, with the latest delay occurring at the end of September.
In his latest statement to the media on November 8th (U.S. time), Chairman Gensler remarked that the cryptocurrency market “has not just one but many fraudsters,” alluding to the recent conviction of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and other individuals and organizations that the SEC has sued in recent times.
