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(Kitco News) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has accepted the recently filed spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded-fund (ETF) applications and opened the public comment period to get feedback before conducting their official review.
On Thursday, the regulator added BlackRock’s spot BTC ETF application to its list of proposed rulemaking filings for the Nasdaq stock market and announced that it was now looking “to solicit comments on the proposed rule change from interested persons.”
The following day, it also accepted and opened the Wise Origin, WisdomTree, VanEck, Invesco Galaxy and ARK 21Shares applications for public comments.
This is the clearest sign yet that the regulator is taking the applications seriously and is preparing to move on to its review of the proposals once the public has been given a chance to weigh in. The lengthy review process will officially begin once the documents are published in the federal register.
BlackRock initially filed its application on June 15, which brought a new wave of momentum to the cryptocurrency market as many saw a spot BTC ETF application from the world's largest asset manager as the best chance yet to finally get such a product listed in the U.S. market.
All of the recently filed applications have been updated to name Coinbase as the exchange partner on the surveillance-sharing agreement (SSA), a critical piece that was missing from previous attempts to launch a spot BTC ETF.
While there is still a long way to go in the regulatory review process before one of these products is approved and launched, the fact that some of the largest asset managers in the world are all vying to launch a physically-backed Bitcoin ETF points to a growing recognition of the potential that cryptocurrencies have to offer the mainstream financial sector.
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| Spot Bitcoin ETF approval could open door for other crypto products - MarketVector Indexes' Martin Leinweber |
EU to get its first spot BTC ETF
The European Union is set to get its first spot BTC ETF with the launch of the Jacobi Bitcoin ETF later this month.
Jacobi Asset Management, a London-based multi-asset investment platform, originally planned to launch its ETF on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange in July 2022 but was forced to delay those plans due to the collapse of the Terra/Luna ecosystem in May 2022 and the subsequent bankruptcy of FTX in November.
The Jacobi Bitcoin ETF was approved by the Guernsey Financial Services Commission (GFSC) to launch its Bitcoin ETF in October 2021.
According to a report from the Financial Times, the asset manager said its fund is “on track” to launch this month after deciding last year that “the time wasn’t right” due to the high-profile collapses and the contagion waves they caused.
The firm noted that “demand has shifted since last summer,” which has likely been influenced by the filing of multiple spot BTC ETFs in the U.S. and the countdown to the next Bitcoin halving, which is expected in late April 2024.
Up to this point, all of the digital asset exchange-traded products (ETPs) in Europe have been structured as exchange-traded notes (ETNs) rather than funds, so the Jacobi Bitcoin ETF will be the first fund product launched in the market.
With ETFs, each shareholder owns a portion of a fund’s underlying shares, while investors in ETNs own a debt security, not the underlying assets. The Jacobi Bitcoin ETF is a centrally cleared crypto-backed financial instrument with custody supported by Fidelity Digital Assets, which is a notable shift from the usual ETNs.
The specific date for the ETF has not yet been released, and the asset manager told Cointelegraph that it is still assessing the launch and will share a date soon.
Data from Coinbase and Bloomberg shows that European digital assets ETPs have experienced $483 million worth of inflows over the past 18 months, with $389 million worth of those inflows happening in Q3 2022. The total value held in these assets is currently €4.3 billion, a notable decrease from its peak of €10.5 billion at the end of 2021.
