Echoing the wider market sentiment, Sam Enzer, partner at law firm Cahill Gordon & Reinel, believes the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is likely to give the greenlight to a bunch of applications to offer spot Bitcoin ETFs before the January 10, 2024.
Bitcoin ETF Has Finally Come
Enzer said the spot ETFs have finally arrived, stating that they should have been approved a long time ago. He said it is fair to say there is significant consensus that the Bitcoin ETF approval is likely to happen owing to the SEC’s loss to Grayscale in the GBTC spot ETF lawsuit. On August 29, 2023, US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the SEC should review its decision to deny conversion of its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into a spot ETF. The judges said the SEC’s prior denial of the application to convert to ETF was “arbitrary and capricious.”
Speaking to Yahoo Finance, the attorney also argued that mainstream financial institutions applying for the ETF meant that the SEC has filings from reliable and competent entities. Companies like Blackrock, Fidelity, Galaxy Digital, VanEck and Skybridge have applied for the ETFs, with a series of ongoing meetings with SEC officials on the filings. The recent meetings were reportedly centered around the SEC’s insistence on the filers opting for the cash creates redemption model as against the in-kind model.
SEC Meetings In Holiday Week; What It Means
The attorney stated that the US SEC would not have held meetings related to redemption models in a holiday week unless the Commission staff are serious about approving the spot ETFs. Earlier, CoinGape reported that Blackrock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton and Grayscale have all held discussions with the agency officials.
In a latest, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Eric Balchunas informed that the ETF filers are in the process of getting signed agreements with authorized participants, which is a last step in the direction of approval. The Commission is in favor of approval if the applicants have clear communication around cash creates model and the signed agreements, he said.
