Per a document filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), hedge fund Ark Invest filed for the first Ethereum spot Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) in the US. This new filing has directly impacted the ETH price as the ETF narrative gains further influence in the crypto market.
ARK Gets Ahead Of The Curve: Ethereum Spot ETF Filing To Trigger Domino Effect?
According to the document file with the SEC, the financial product will trade on the Cboe BZX Exchange and track the ETH price on the spot market as displayed by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). Ark has listed Benchmarks as their Index manager and is sponsored by 21Shares.
Furthermore, Ark selected crypto exchange Coinbase as their ETH custodian, similar to its Bitcoin spot ETF application. The company will hold the totality of Ark’s ETH on their behalf.
The SEC has emphasized the importance of the custodian for a potential Bitcoin ETF approval. Logically, the Commission will impose the exact requirements for an ETH spot ETF. Ark stated the following in their Ethereum ETF application:
(…) After diligence investigation, the Sponsor believes that the Custodian’s policies, procedures, and controls for safekeeping, exclusively possessing, and controlling the Trust’s ether holds are consistent with industry best practices to protect against theft, loss, and unauthorized and accidental use of the private keys. The Custodian is a third-party limited purpose trust company that was chartered in 2018 upon receiving a trust charter from the New York Department of Financial Services.
Bloomberg Intelligence’s ETF experts Eric Balchunas and James Seyffart have been tracking the crypto ETF applications in the US. The experts are optimistic about the SEC approving a Bitcoin spot ETF.
For this application, the experts expect more hedge funds and asset managers to file for their ETH spot ETF application in the coming days. Seyffart stated via social media platform X:
Here we go … expect more spot #ethereum ETFs filings in the coming days. NOTE: this is an S-1 and not a 19b-4. Which means it does not start a clock in any way … yet. Expect 19b-4’s soon.
As of this writing, ETH’s price trades at $1,620 moving sideways over the past few days.
Cover image from Unsplash, chart from Tradingview
