Grayscale urges US SEC to treat all bitcoin spot ETF applications equally

Odaily Planet Daily News Grayscale (Grayscale) Chief Legal Officer Craig Salm issued an open letter stating that the Grayscale legal team submitted a comment letter to GBTC's 19b-4 application and seven spot Bitcoin ETF documents submitted by other companies, including The newly proposed Supervisory Sharing Agreement (SSA) aims to illustrate why the SEC should approve all spot bitcoin ETF applications. Craig Salm wrote, “We continue to be encouraged by the growing momentum in spot bitcoin ETF applications. This not only highlights the continued maturation of the bitcoin spot market, but also reinforces our longstanding belief that US investors should be able to Buy Spot Bitcoin ETF.” There are several key points in the comment letter: First, as clarified in the lawsuit, the SEC already has the ability to approve a spot bitcoin ETF, building on its previous decision to approve a bitcoin futures ETF. Bitcoin’s spot and futures markets are inextricably linked (third-party research shows a 99% correlation). This means that regulation of the CME bitcoin futures market should be sufficient to prevent potential fraud or manipulation in the underlying spot bitcoin market. The CME Bitcoin futures market is a larger market regulated by the US CFTC and a member of the Intermarket Surveillance Group, a global exchange network that shares market supervision. Craig Salm said that Grayscale does not believe that the introduction of a supervisory sharing agreement in the spot bitcoin market is or should be a "panacea" for spot bitcoin ETFs to be approved in the United States. Second, the SEC's actions related to Bitcoin ETFs should be conducted in a fair and orderly manner. As a disclosure-based regulator, the SEC should not pick winners and losers; instead, the SEC should continue to provide feedback or guidance to issuers consistently and fairly. Ultimately, this is about ensuring that U.S. investors are protected and able to choose their preferred Bitcoin investment vehicle. Nearly 1 million investors in all 50 states of the United States own GBTC. If GBTC is converted into an ETF, it will bring billions of dollars in returns to these investors. When the SEC is ready to approve a spot bitcoin ETF application, there is simply no reason to prevent GBTC investors from buying their fair share of bitcoin ETFs, and Grayscale will continue to advocate for this proposal on behalf of investors.