Grayscale asks the SEC to Approve All Bitcoin ETF Applications at the Same Time
- Grayscale has asked the SEC to approve all the Bitcoin ETF applications at the same time.
- Invesco, BlackRock, Valkyrie, VanEck, Wisdom, Fidelity, and ARK Invest’s applications were amended to include SSAs.
- Grayscale pointed out that the SSAs “would neither satisfy nor be necessary” under the SEC’s standards.
- Approving the ETFs would be “a positive but sudden and significant change” in the SEC’s application of its standard.
Leading cryptocurrency asset management firm Grayscale has asked the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to approve all the applications for the public listing of a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the US at the same time. The firm led by Michael Sonnenshein claims that this will prevent a single ETF from having a majority of investors.
As per a post on July 27, Grayscale said that while it awaits the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals, for the conversion of its flagship product GBTC to a Bitcoin spot ETF, the firm’s legal team at Davis Polk submitted a comment letter to GBTC’s pending 19b-4 filing, as well as seven other spot bitcoin ETF filings with newly-proposed surveillance sharing agreements (SSAs).
“We remain encouraged by the increased momentum around spot bitcoin ETF filings. Not only does this underscore the continued maturation of the bitcoin spot market, but it also reinforces our long-held belief that American investors should have access to spot bitcoin ETFs in the US,” said the post from Grayscale.
As per earlier reports, the Bitcoin ETF applications from Invesco, BlackRock, Valkyrie, VanEck, Wisdom, Fidelity, and ARK Invest were recently amended to include surveillance sharing agreements with the leading crypto exchange in the country, Coinbase. The only public trading platform will be responsible for sharing information on its trading books and other information that the SEC seeks to access.
Interestingly, Grayscale pointed out that the SSAs “would neither satisfy nor be necessary” under the SEC’s standards because Coinbase is not registered as a securities platform with the SEC nor with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as a futures exchange.
Grayscale further pointed out that approving the Bitcoin spot ETFs would be “a positive but sudden and significant change” in the SEC’s application of its standard and would “improperly grant an unfairly discriminatory and prejudicial first-mover advantage to these proposals.”
Finally, the crypto asset management company claimed that there are “nearly one million investors across all 50 states who own GBTC, and GBTC’s conversion to an ETF would return billions of dollars in value to these investors.”
As reported earlier by Bitnation, Grayscale Investments announced a new business arm named the Grayscale Funds Trust, a Delaware statutory trust structure that will be responsible for scaling the firm’s business around the world and managing its line of products in-house.
A crypto journalist with over 3 years of experience in DeFi, NFT, metaverse, etc. Parth has worked with major media outlets in the crypto and finance world and has gained experience and expertise in crypto culture after surviving bear and bull markets over the years.
