- The SEC has asked companies to make final changes to applications for spot Bitcoin ETFs.
- The deadline for making changes is set for December 29, 2023.
- If firms do not meet the deadline, they will lose the opportunity to be in the “first wave” of approved applications.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has advised applicants to launch spot Bitcoin ETFs to amend their applications by the end of the year.. This was reported by Reuters citing its own sources.
As it became known, on December 21, SEC staff met with representatives of at least seven companies hoping to launch Bitcoin-based spot exchange-traded funds. They advised them to make changes to existing applications. The regulator has set the deadline for such amendments to December 29, 2023.
According to the minutes of the meetings mentioned by the source, they were attended by representatives of exchanges, including Nasdaq and Cboe, as well as lawyers for issuers. Regulators told participants that if the companies did not meet the deadline, they would lose the opportunity to receive SEC approval in early January, the report said.
Back in November, representatives of Grayscale and Blackrock met with SEC specialists to discuss details of a possible listing of a spot Bitcoin ETF. Issuers have made significant progress in negotiations with the SEC, as evidenced by the frequency of amendments in these cases. After a conversation with representatives of the regulator, Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenschein said that he was “optimistic.”
The likelihood that the Commission will approve several applications at once before January 10, 2024 remains high. The indicated deadline is the next interim deadline for the Ark Invest/21Shares case. The companies submitted a joint application back in 2022 and are seeking primacy among other ETF issuers.
Let us recall that the SEC previously rejected a decision on Bitcoin ETFs from a number of companies, including Franklin Templeton, Hashdex, Ark Invest and 21Shares, BlackRock and Fidelity. Later, Commission Chairman Gary Gensler admitted that the agency’s position had changed after some court decisions.
At the end of November 2023, the SEC Chairman confirmed the thesis that Bitcoin is a commodity. According to him, the regulator does not want to make a hasty decision on applications for spot exchange-traded funds based on this asset.