On March 10, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission ruled against a change that would allow investment manager VanEck to create a spot Bitcoin (BTC) trust. Commissioner Mark Uyeda joined his colleague Hester Peirce in issuing a statement criticizing the commission’s decision not to approve the listing and trading of the financial product.
The commissioners noted that the SEC had denied every application for a Bitcoin spot trust that had been filed, totaling nearly 20 in the last six years. Their VanEck decision “reiterates the analysis that the Commission has given in each of these recent orders,” they said, but:
“In our view, the Commission is using a different set of targets than it used, and still does, for other types of commodity-based ETPs to keep these spot bitcoin ETPs off exchanges. that we regulate”.
The agency argued that there is no underlying regulated market and therefore VanEck does not have a “comprehensive surveillance exchange agreement with a regulated market of significant size related to spot bitcoin.” While that is a requirement that applies to all exchange-traded products (ETPs):
“It is also clear that the Commission is using an exceptionally onerous definition of ‘significant’ in its analyzes of bitcoin spot ETP submissions.”
The commissioners said the SEC had not required any connection between the spot and futures markets to be demonstrated for other commodity-based ETPs, and “significant” appeared to apply to trading venue liquidity and volume. in cases that do not involve Bitcoin. The SEC is required by law to explain changes to its policy for approving commodity-based ETPs, they added.
Related: This Is Why The SEC Keeps Rejecting Bitcoin Spot ETF Applications
VanEck has a financial product tied to Bitcoin futures. It began its attempts to gain approval for a spot-linked product in 2017. The SEC delayed making a decision on the company’s current and third application for a spot ETP for months.
Bullish and Bearish Arguments for Bitcoin – February 2023: https://t.co/hSVCdzoUD5
— FENERATOR Capital (@feneratorcom) March 5, 2023
Uyeda, who was nominated by US President Joe Biden and appointed to his post in June, released a statement on the SEC’s proposed tightening of custody rules in February, in which he stated: “This approach to custody appears to mask a political decision to block access to cryptocurrency as an asset class.”
