Vedant Sahu
Seven of the 13 applicants for spot Bitcoin ETFs filed revised S-1s with the SEC on the day of the deadline. An official decision is expected by Jan. 9, and trading should begin around Jan. 11. If a launch is approved, issuers may be notified as soon as Jan. 3.
The hopefuls in the race for a spot Bitcoinexchange-traded fund (ETF) waited until the very last minute to submit the final versions of their Form S-1 applications on Dec. 29. The filings trickled into the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) throughout the day, with Invesco Galaxy, Bitwise, WisdomTree and Fidelitycoming in after BlackRock, Van Eck and Valkyrie.
Fidelity, WisdomTree and Invesco Galaxy announced their authorized participants in the new filings. Invesco Galaxy selected Virtu and JPMorgan, while WisdomTree and Fidelity gave the honor to Jane Street Capital.
WisdomTree has chosen to maintain in-kind share creation and redemption in spite of the SEC’s urging to switch to cash.
In addition, analyst Eric Balchunas noticed that the competitors had started a bit of a price war, with Invesco Galaxy waiving its fee for the first six months and the first $5 billion in assets. Fidelity set its fee at 0.39%.
Bitwise has yet to name authorized participants, but it did note in its new S-1 that an unnamed party is interested in purchasing up to $200 million in shares of the ETF.
BlackRock, Van Eck, Grayscale, Bitwise, WisdomTree, Invesco Galaxy, Fidelity, ARK Invest, Valkyrie, Franklin, Hashdex, Global X ETFs and Pando Asset have all submitted S-1 applications for spot Bitcoin ETFs.
Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas expects a positive decision on Jan. 9 and trading to begin around Jan. 11. As reported by Reuters, if a launch is approved for the following week, issuers may be notified as soon as Jan. 3
The SEC set Dec. 29 as the deadline for spot BTC ETF S-1 amendments. Grayscale’s last submission was a new S-3 filed on Dec. 27 after the resignation of Barry Silbert from the board of directors. In the new filing, Grayscale stated that it would convert its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust into a cash-only spot ETF, as Van Eck did earlier the same day and BlackRock did in an earlier revision.
Silbert and the Digital Currency Group, which he is the founder and CEO of, are under SEC investigation.