In what looks like exciting news for the crypto community, representatives from BlackRock and Nasdaq have held a meeting with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), where a proposal is put forward to the SEC for allowing the listing of BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF.
A memo from the SEC states that BlackRock has made a presentation to the regulatory authority where they have provided details on how the firm could apply for either an in-kind or in-cash redemption approach for their iShares Bitcoin Trust.
The reaction of the SEC officials towards this request is not yet clear, and the question is still there of whether or not the SEC is willing to give them the green light, which would see the BlackRock spot Bitcoin ETF receiving approval to be listed.
So far, the firm has seen many rejections and delays from the regulatory body in the past, but the general sentiment in the market is that the time is getting near when the SEC will have no choice but to approve these requests.
How soon the SEC will reach its decision to approve the spot Bitcoin ETF applications is still not clear. Still, if approved, it would be a game changer in the sense that it would mean that the regulatory authority of the US, which has been very critical in their approach to adopting cryptocurrency in the past, is now taking a much lenient stance and are willing to accept the inevitable that the cryptocurrency is indeed here to stay and can be a considered an alternative to traditional financial investment opportunities like stocks, bonds, real estate, etc.
BlackRock isn’t the only firm that had a meeting with the SEC in the past few days to discuss the approval process of their ETF. Executives from Grayscale also met with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to discuss converting its flagship Bitcoin trust into a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF).
The meeting, disclosed in a November 20 SEC memo, involved Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein and legal chief Craig Salm, among others. Discussions were focused on the proposed rule change for listing and trading shares of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust.
Grayscale also entered an agreement with BNY Mellon, designating the bank as the agent for its Bitcoin Trust, handling share issuance and redemption.
Apart from BlackRock and Grayscale, several other financial powerhouses are waiting to gain approval from the SEC for their spot Bitcoin ETFs. Among them are Fidelity, Invesco Galaxy, Valkyrie, VanEck, WisdomTree, and Bitwise.
The crypto community believes that if these applications are approved, then the market can see a meteoric rise in the value of several crypto assets. The other reason for this optimism is that the SEC has approved Future-based ETF applications in the past, so the precedence is there that at some point, they may show the same courtesy to Spot-based ETF applications.
