The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has extended its evaluation period for multiple spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) applications.
The SEC Announced The Extended Evaluation Timeline
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has extended its evaluation period for multiple spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) applications, causing a delay in decisions for major firms including BlackRock, Wisdom Tree Funds, Invesco, Galaxy Digital, and Valkyrie Funds.
The SEC announced the extended evaluation timeline for these applications, pushing its decision deadline to at least October 17, as stated in regulatory filings.
The application from Global X remains an exception, and the deadline for a response is October 7. Notably, the application submitted by one of the biggest asset managers in the world, BlackRock, was among the last ones the regulator responded to.
The current decision follows a court judgment that supported crypto asset management company Grayscale in its effort to transform its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust into a spot Bitcoin ETF. Experts stress that the court decision does not, however, equate to approval because the SEC still has 45 days to appeal the judge's decision.
Market analysts predicted the SEC's delays, suggesting that the regulatory body would need time to process the court's order, which criticized the SEC's rationale for past rejections.
It has long been a problem that the SEC has been reluctant to approve spot Bitcoin ETFs because of worries about fraud and market manipulation. The contradiction of rejecting spot ETFs but accepting futures-based Bitcoin ETFs since 2021 was brought to light by the court's recent comments.
In response to the SEC's actions, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) sold off by 4.48% to around $26,000, according to CoinMarketCap.
