The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is set to review another pair of proposed ETFs from ProShares later this week.
SEC Commissioners are scheduled to render their verdict regarding the ProShares Bitcoin ETF and the ProShares Short Bitcoin ETF no later than Thursday, August 23. Unlike the earlier decision to delay ETF filings, ProShares' filing with NYSE Arca cannot be delayed under SEC rules.
ProShares ETF filings were originally filed with the SEC on December 19 of last year, and the filing was published in the federal register a week later. However, the SEC has already postponed its decision three times, on January 30, March 23 and June 15. Now, according to the Commission's rules, it has exhausted all options for delaying the consideration of the application and August 23 is the last date.
On the SEC's waiting list, ProShares' two applications are based on derivatives linked to the Bitcoin price, rather than the Bitcoin reserve. That is, the price of the ETF will depend on the price of Bitcoin futures trading on the CME or CBOE.
To date, the regulator has rejected or delayed consideration of all proposals for Bitcoin ETFs, with the most recent rejection by the regulator last month, when the commission rejected a proposal submitted by Gemini founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.
Over-the-counter Bitcoin funds from GraniteShares and a Bitcoin ETF from Direxion.
Moreover, experts’ opinions on ETFs vary. So Andreas M. Antonopoulos considers the consequences of the approval of the Bitcoin ETF for the cryptosystem to be global. In his opinion, the ETF will allow institutional investors to manipulate the price of bitcoin.
Initalik Buterin is confident that such attention to cryptocurrency ETFs is too exaggerated.
CNBC analyst Brian Kelly doubts that the regulator will make at least one positive decision this year.
Regardless of the opinion of experts, the cryptocurrency market has recently reacted sharply to news from the SEC and continues to demonstrate instability. The market may once again react negatively to the news about the rejection of another ProShares ETF application.
In general, the time frame for making decisions on Bitcoin ETFs is as follows:
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