Bitcoin ETF Hopefuls Eye This Week for Long-Awaited SEC Greenlight
A series of high-stakes deadlines this week will mark the culmination of a years-long push to launch exchange-traded funds backed by Bitcoin in the US.
Would-be Bitcoin ETF issuers have been given until Monday morning in Washington to submit any last-minute revisions to their pending applications, Bloomberg News has reported. The US Securities and Exchange Commission itself has until Jan. 10 to take action on at least one of those applications, and crypto insiders have speculated the regulator will use that date to announce a slew of decisions at once.
There are two technical requirements that must be fulfilled before a spot-backed Bitcoin ETF can start trading. First, the SEC must sign off on so-called 19b-4 filings by the exchanges that would list the ETFs. Second, the regulator must approve the relevant S-1 forms, which are the registration applications from the would-be issuers — a list that includes BlackRock and Fidelity.
The SEC is planning to vote on the exchanges’ filings, the 19b-4s, in the coming days, Bloomberg News has reported. The regulator may or may not then take action on the issuers’ applications, the S-1s, around the same time. If the SEC grants both sets of required approvals, the ETFs could start trading as soon as the next business day.
An SEC representative declined to comment on the status of the applications.