The chief executive of financial giant VanEck reportedly says that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will likely reject bids to launch Ethereum (ETH) exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
Though many finance institutions had their bids for Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs approved earlier this year, VanEck CEO Jan van Eck told CNBC in an interview that he doesn’t think the regulatory agency will greenlight ETH ETFs.
“We were the first to file as well for Ethereum in the U.S., and we and [Ark Invest CEO] Cathy Wood, are kind of the first in line for May, I guess, to probably be rejected…
The way the legal process goes is the regulators will give you comments on your application, and that happened for weeks and weeks before the Bitcoin ETFs – and right now, pins are dropping as far as Ethereum is concerned.”
The SEC approved BTC ETFs in January after years of rejecting them following a court order to reconsider the applications. ETFs grant traders exposure to an asset without them having to actually purchase it.
In March, the regulatory agency announced that it needed more time to consider the possibility of an ETF based on Ethereum, and would be delaying its decision by 60 days until May.
However, some crypto firms – such as top US-based crypto exchange Coinbase and blockchain software provider Consensys – are urging the SEC to approve ETH ETFs, saying that Ethereum’s cybersecurity and resilience to fraud is even greater than that of Bitcoin’s.
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