jakiro
Author: Sarah Wynn, The Block; Compilation: Deng Tong, Bitchain Vision
summary
-
According to sources, the U.S. SEC Trading and Marketing Department notified the exchange on Monday that they would approve 19b-4 this week, a change to their position two weeks ago.
-
Sources said the issuer in charge of S-1 contacted the U.S. SEC, but the U.S. SEC’s financial department appears to be inconsistent with the trading and market departments.
Now is the critical moment for exchanges to struggle with the seemingly sudden shift in the U.S. SEC in its potential approval of spot Ethereum ETFs.
On Monday, the U.S. SEC Trading and Marketing Department called the exchange to tell them that 19b-4 will be approved this week, according to a person familiar with the matter.Meanwhile, Barron’s magazine quoted people familiar with the matter as saying,U.S. SEC staff told the exchange on Monday that they tend to approve the plans.
A person familiar with the matter said thatThere was a 180-degree turnaround with what the SEC told the issuer two weeks ago, when the agency showed no interest in the documents.
“This is a completely unprecedented situation, which means it’s totally political,” the source said.
The issuer in charge of S-1 at the time began calling the SEC.However, people familiar with the matter said that reviewers at the U.S. SEC’s financial department appear to be inconsistent with the agency’s trading and marketing departments.
It is worth noting thatThe SEC’s trading and marketing department approved 19b-4s, while the institution’s corporate finance department was responsible for S-1s.
“They haven’t even coordinated internally yet, which is why it’s likely a political decision,” said one person familiar with the matter.
Some sources speculate thatAs the election approaches, the US SEC may have changed its mind due to political motives.Former President Trump has appeared to support cryptocurrencies in the past month.The former president told a group of people who bought his NFTs that President Joe Biden didn’t know what cryptocurrency is and said: “If you like any form of cryptocurrency, it comes in many different forms, if you support cryptocurrency, you’d better vote for Trump.”
Sources said they wouldn’t be surprised if this became a campaign issue.
“The problem is that the Democratic Party urgently needs young people to vote. And if you look at what Biden does from a campaign perspective, the main positioning is to position yourself as a visionary 80-year-old,” the source said.Sources added,President Joe Biden may win through the US SEC approval of spot Ethereum ETF.
The US SEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ji Kim, chief law and policy officer of the Cryptocurrency Innovation Commission, noted: “Lawmakers have heard from their constituents that cryptocurrencies are not only important, but they want to regulate in this area.”
Kim added that a national poll conducted by the committee “showedThere is an unusual phenomenon of splitting votes between the presidential vote and Congress, which means cryptocurrency voters may be a key swing voting group.”
Next is an update to Form 19b-4 after receiving the US SEC comment.Sources say that given the tight deadline, there will be very few comments on 19b-4.
“They [SEC] do the equivalent of writing a semester paper the night before,” the source said of the agency’s work to retract 19b-4s comments.
Not that sudden
Some are unsure whether the SEC will suddenly change its view on spot Ethereum ETFs.
“If the US SEC wants to draw a line on Ethereum — whether it’s because they think it’s securities, or because they’re worried about the correlation between spot and futures markets, or other reasons — the opportunity for them to do soIt was approved by the Ethereum Futures ETF by October last year,” Nathan Geraci, president of The ETF Store, said in an email.“But they didn’t do that.”
The SEC had previously approved a batch of Ethereum Futures ETFs in October 2023, including ProShares, VanEck and Bitwise.
Geraci says:“Once the SEC approves the Ethereum Futures ETF, this may determine the approval result of the Ethereum spot ETF.”“I strongly suspect that the SEC has learned important lessons from the spot Bitcoin ETF approval process and has decided to handle spot Ethereum ETFs more quietly.”
Geraci also noted that when the SEC approved the spot Bitcoin ETF earlier this year, it did most of the “heavy work” with the languages in the spot Ethereum ETF 19b-4 and S-1.At that time, some difficult issues had to be solved, including whether there was a cash or physical exchange model.
“This makesIt is easier for SEC to wait until the last minute to contact exchanges and issuers,” Geraci said of spot Ethereum ETFs.
