The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has delayed its decision to allow options trading for BlackRock and Bitwise's spot ethereum (eth) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) until mid-November. according until the presentations on September 24th.
The new deadlines for BlackRock and Bitwise are Nov. 10 and Nov. 11, respectively. The SEC said it needed more time to consider the proposal and extended the initial 45-day review period that would have ended Sept. 26 for BlackRock since Nasdaq filed the rule change application for the iShares ethereum Trust ETF on July 22.
The same reasoning was applied Bitwise’s ETHW, whose decision date was pushed back to Nov. 11 because the proposed rule change was filed a day after BlackRock’s.
Options are a big theme for cryptocurrency ETFs
BlackRock's iShares bitcoin Trust (IBIT) received SEC approval for options trading on September 20.
Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg, said this was a “x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1837242504552534091″>great victory” for bitcoin (btc) ETFs, as it will attract more liquidity and, consequently, more “big fish.”
Matthew Sigel, director of digital asset research at VanEck, also x.com/matthew_sigel/status/1838575752695980228″>shared a K33 Research report on Sept. 24, which highlighted that the bitcoin derivatives market is 279 times smaller than its stock and commodities counterparts.
In particular, the volume of bitcoin options traded on the top five centralized cryptocurrency exchanges was equivalent to approximately USD 33.3 billion between September 1 and 22.
Meanwhile, ethereum options volume in the same period amounted to just $9.2 billion, more than three times less than bitcoin. Therefore, ethereum ETFs have even more room for growth with the SEC's addition of options trading.
Mentioned in this article
Gino Matos
Gino Matos is a law graduate and seasoned journalist with six years of experience in the cryptocurrency industry. His expertise is mainly focused on the Brazilian blockchain ecosystem and developments in decentralized finance (DeFi).
Assad Jafri
A passionate journalist since the 2011 Arab Spring in Yemen, AJ has honed his skills around the world for over a decade. Specializing in financial journalism, he now focuses on cryptocurrency reporting.
