The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has delayed its decision on whether to approve a number of spot ethereum exchange-traded funds (ETFs) but, according to investment firm Bitwise’s chief investment officer Matt Hougan, that may be a good thing.
In an interview with Forbes, Hougan said that the asset management industry is too focused on spot bitcoin products to allow ether ETFs the necessary attention to thrive in the market.
“I think the [Ethereum] ETFs will be more successful if they launch in 12 months than if they launch in May. I know that sounds goofy, but I think TradFi is still digesting Bitcoin and if you give TradFi time to get comfortable with Bitcoin and crypto, they will be ready for the next thing,” Hougan said.
Bitwise is the latest firm to apply for a spot ether ETF, joining heavyweight institutions like BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale, Franklin Templeton, VanEck, and Invesco Galaxy. The SEC has already delayed its decision timeline for a number of those applicants, and industry watchers have grown less optimistic about the chance of an approval to come in May, which is when VanEck and 21Shares/Ark will come up against the final deadline.
Each issuer has four deadlines for a decision and the SEC has already delayed some decisions as issuers approach the initial deadlines.
My cautiously optimistic attitude for ETH ETFs has changed from recent months. We now believe these will ultimately be denied May 23rd for this round. The SEC hasn't engaged with issuers on Ethereum specifics. Exact opposite of #Bitcoin ETFs this fall. https://t.co/TyAzAOrAC5
— James Seyffart (@JSeyff) March 19, 2024
ETF analysts at Bloomberg have lowered their expectations of an ether ETF being approved in May down to 35% from 70% at the start of the year, and some market participants are now concerned that an ether-based ETF will be approved at all after reports that the SEC is looking into the Ethereum Foundation and ether’s possible classification as a security.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, however, doesn’t necessarily think that will factor into the ultimate approval of an ether ETF. In an interview with Fox Business last week, Fink said that ether’s potential designation as a security would not be “deleterious.”
Ethereum infrastructure firm Consensys submitted a comment letter to the SEC on March 29 asserting that there was no substantive basis for the agency to reject a spot ether ETF.
“In fact Ethereum’s PoS [proof-of-stake] implementation meets and even exceeds the security of Bitcoin’s Proof of Work (PoW), which underlies bitcoin-based ETFs that have already been approved for trading by the SEC,” said Conensys in an accompanying blog post.
