SEC Begins Negotiations with Grayscale on Bitcoin ETF

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has begun negotiations with Grayscale Investments over the company’s request to convert its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into a Bitcoin spot exchange-traded fund (ETF).

According to a report published by CoinDesk, an anonymous source revealed that Grayscale contacted the SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets and the Division of Corporate Finance regarding the matter. The initiative occurred after the SEC lost in court a lawsuit filed by Grayscale that demanded that the regulator review its request to convert GBCT into an ETF.

In August, as CriptoFácil reported, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals supported Grayscale in its lawsuit against the regulator’s decision to deny its request to convert GBTC into an ETF. The court ordered that the review petition be granted and the commission’s order set aside.

The victory did not mean that the fund will become an ETF immediately, but it was an important step in that direction. After all, the SEC will have to review Grayscale’s request again. You can then authorize the request or deny it with other justifications than the initial ones.

In its ruling, the court called the denial of the ETF proposal in cash “arbitrary and capricious.” This is because the SEC failed to explain the different treatment of similar products.

Grayscale conversa com a SEC

A few weeks ago, Grayscale presented a new conversion of the fund into an ETF. After that, in September, Gensler said the agency was still reviewing the court’s decision during a Senate Banking Committee hearing.

In addition to Grayscale, several companies requested authorization from the regulator to launch spot Bitcoin ETFs. The main ones are: BlackRock, Fidelity and VanEck. In total, it is estimated that the SEC has between eight and ten ETF applications to analyze.

The approval of one or more ETFs by the SEC is eagerly awaited by the sector, which sees this moment as a milestone that could facilitate investors’ path to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.