SEC Approves Bitcoin ETFs

Today, the SEC (SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION)  approved the listing and trading of a number of spot bitcoin exchange-traded product (ETP) shares.

(WASHINGTON, DC) Financial News: The Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday approved spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds.

After a decade of hype, Bitcoin will soon effectively be listed on exchanges, giving it a pathway to investment portfolios alongside stocks and bonds. As we previously reported Bitcoin ETFs could start trading as soon as Thursday.

The breakthrough comes after a false start Tuesday, when Bitcoin price briefly spiked to $47,680 on a since-deleted SEC tweet that claimed the funds were approved to list on national exchanges. The SEC soon after said its social media account had been “compromised.”

Wednesday’s decision marks an end to a decade-plus of rejections for so-called spot bitcoin ETFs, with the easy button finally arriving for investors who want increased exposure to cryptocurrency.

Fund issuers have been doing battle with the SEC to launch one since Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss filed the very first application in July 2013.
Regulators rejected them due to concerns about market manipulation, but after a court sided with Grayscale Investments, finding the SEC’s rejections had been “arbitrary and capricious.”

Approval is also a watershed moment for SEC chair Gary Gensler, who’s been a scourge of cryptocurrency in ways that have made industry players view his motives with suspicion.

Some of that antipathy was on display in Gensler’s statement, in which he referred to bitcoin in sharply critical terms as a “speculative, volatile asset that’s also used for illicit activity including ransomware, money laundering, sanction evasion, and terrorist financing.”