Prominent Financial Institutions BlackRock and VanEck, known for their work as asset management companies and, more lately, their filings of spot Bitcoin ETF, have made amendments in their submission of form S1 to the United States Securities and Exchange (SEC).
Both these companies are considered front-runners in the race to win the first approval to list their spot as Bitcoin Exchange-traded Fund (ETF).
The Wall Street asset managers filed their updated applications on December 29, 2023, which was the deadline given by the SEC for the submission of any updated applications related to the spot Bitcoin ETF.
Officials from the SEC organized a meeting on December 21, 2023, where SEC officials engaged with representatives from at least seven firms looking to launch spot Bitcoin ETFs in the early part of the following year.
Notable participants in this meeting included BlackRock, Grayscale Investments, 21Shares, and Ark Invest.
During the meeting, regulators emphasized that issuers must meet the December 29 deadline for submitting amended Form S-1 applications. Please do so to ensure they are eligible for inclusion in the first wave of potential approvals for spot Bitcoin ETFs, with official announcements expected in January.
BlackRock and VanEck have agreed to SEC’s cash-only condition
Van Eck has stated in their revised applications that the Authorized Participants (APs), which are the financial firms that have been permitted to buy or redeem shares with Trust, will use a cash-only model for creating and redeeming shares, something which was expressed by the SEC that the firms should follow in the meeting they conducted.
In the updated filing from BlackRock, Jane Street and JPMorgan Securities are identified as Authorized Participants for the proposed spot Bitcoin ETF application. BlackRock has also explicitly indicated that they will follow the cash-only model in their application.
BlackRock has already conducted two meetings with the SEC in December of this year to work towards a resolution where the regulatory authority will approve their application for spot Bitcoin ETF filing. The firm filed its ETF application back in June of 2023.
Eric Balchunas, a financial analyst from Bloomberg who has kept his eyes on the development regarding the spot Bitcoin ETF applications from the start, has expressed his views on the current announcement.
He believes it is only time before he starts seeing these SEC-approved applications, with BlackRock being the first in line.
His direct words were:” Looks like we have our first horse at the starting gate,” a reference to the possibility of BlackRock being the first in line to see their application getting approved.
BlackRock, Van Eck, Grayscale, Fidelity, ARK Invest, Valkyrie, Franklin, Hashdex, Global X ETFs, Bitwise, WisdomTree, Invesco, Galaxy, and Pando Asset are the names of the firms that have all submitted S-1 applications for spot Bitcoin ETFs.
The crypto world eagerly awaits the news of these applications getting approved, as most believe this is the catalyst that will pump the crypto market further above. We would have the possibility of several tokens, especially Bitcoin, reaching new highs when these applications are approved, and people can buy spot Bitcoin ETFs.
