U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission building, Washington DC, USA, 25 June 2018. Shutterstock
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has extended the review period of four Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) by 45 days, the regulator said in a notice on 29 September.
According to the announcement, the decision to approve or decline the applications has been delayed on for Global X Bitcoin Trust, Valkyrie XBTO Bitcoin Futures Fund, Kryptoin Bitcoin ETF, and WisdomTree Bitcoin Trist. The SEC now has 45 more days — or until 21 November for Global X, 8 December for Valkyrie, 24 December for Kryptoin, and 11 December for WidomTree — to make a a decision on the proposed BTC ETFs. The regulator said in its notice:
“The Commission finds that it is appropriate to designate a longer period within which to take action on the proposed rule change so that it has sufficient time to consider the proposed rule change and any comments.”
The Chairman of the SEC, Gary Gensler, has repeatedly stated that ETFs based on bitcoin futures have a better chance of gaining regulatory approval than those that invest in the performance of the digital asset. Out of the four ETF applications that had their review period extended, only Valkyrie’ ETF is linked to the Bitcoin futures market.
While the four are just a fraction of all the ETF applications submitted to the SEC over the years, it is still expected that the regulator will soon approve at least one of the ETFs linked to Bitcoin. Recently, a senior ETF analyst for Bloomberg made the claim that the SEC could approve of such an investment vehicle by the end of October, marking ProShares’ BTC futures ETF as the most likely to receive the green light.