BlackRock has criticized the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for treating spot-crypto and crypto-futures exchange-traded fund (ETF) applications differently. The asset management firm argued that the SEC’s preference for the 1940 Act, which oversees futures ETFs, lacks relevance to both crypto-spot and crypto-futures ETFs. BlackRock’s plan for a spot-Ether (ETH) ETF called the “iShares Ethereum Trust” was recently confirmed. The SEC has approved several crypto futures ETFs but has yet to greenlight a single spot-crypto ETF application. The SEC claims that crypto futures ETFs have superior regulation and consumer protections under the 1940 Act compared to the 1933 Act that covers spot-crypto ETFs. However, BlackRock argues that this distinction is without a difference in the context of ETH-based ETP proposals. The firm believes that the SEC has no justifiable reason to reject its spot ETH ETF application. It is widely anticipated that the first SEC approval of a spot crypto ETF, possibly a Bitcoin-related one, is imminent. Bloomberg ETF analysts predict a 90% chance of approval before January 10 next year.
