It's the deadline for the Securities and Exchange Commission for an Ethereum ETF. Now, according to sources close to the SEC, the regulator is showing signs of being open to the idea of allowing trading of a spot Ethereum ETF.
According to an anonymous source fox business The committee said it was taking cues from recent court rulings and past decisions to allow trading of an ETH futures ETF as it considered whether to allow the nine funds to begin trading.
Most urgently for the SEC is to make a decision regarding the listing applications for the VanEck Ethereum ETF and Ark 21Shares Ethereum ETF from the Cboe exchange.
But that's not all. With the addition of VanEck, Ark Invest, and 21Shares, there are a total of nine applicants. The rest are BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale (which wants to convert the Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE) as well as the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC)), Hashdex, Franklin Templeton, and Invesco. and Galaxy Digital and Bitwise.
At the time of writing, Ethereum's price is above $3,800, which is 2% higher than at the same time yesterday.
Hype over a possible Ethereum ETF has skyrocketed, with trading volumes ballooning to $45 billion in the past 24 hours — for perspective, that's just $4 billion shy of the amount of Bitcoin traded in the past day, according to CoinGlass.
Additionally, Ethereum’s outstanding balance increased by another 4% to $16 billion. This is also bad news for Ethereum derivatives traders. According to Coinglass, in the past day he has liquidated $43 million worth of Ethereum futures positions, which is nearly double the amount of Bitcoin futures positions liquidated in the past 24 hours.
Meanwhile, Gensler faced tough questioning in a letter from the House Financial Services Committee yesterday.
Republican lawmakers, including HFSC Chairman Patrick McHenry (R-South Carolina), were concerned that regulators recently gave permission for digital asset firm Prometheum to begin offering Ethereum custody services. .
The fact that Prometheum is an SEC-regulated company and has received permission from the commission to provide its services seems to imply that the commission is treating ETH like a security, despite the commission’s repeated refusal to share its position on the issue.
Footnote: An unredacted version of ConsenSys’ lawsuit against the SEC over its treatment of Ethereum says that an internal memo circulated last year instructed commission staff to treat ETH like a security.
