SEC releases report for ‘rule change’ to approve a Bitcoin ETF
Story by: Priyamvada Singh
The Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC], which is the regulatory body in the US released a document on Thursday, where it has discussed the proposed rule change submitted by Cboe BZX Exchange, Inc. at the beginning of 2018. The rule change was proposed to enable the trading of GraniteShares Bitcoin ETF, which was put forth this year and was rejected recently by the regulatory body.
In February, the decision of the proposed rule change was delayed to a later date. However, after the session in February, several hearings took place wherein the regulator delayed the proceedings till August this year. In the month of August, the matter finally experienced a twist when the original proposal from January received a solid amendment and changed in its entirety.
Post this amendment, the Division of Trading and Markets is also a regulatory body that manages the regulation of major securities market participants, such as FINRA and stock exchanges. The Division sets standards for fair, organized and efficient markets. Subsequently, the report issued by SEC also added:
“On August 23, 2018, the Secretary of the Commission notified BZX that, pursuant to Commission Rule of Practice 431,10 the Commission would review the Division’s action pursuant to delegated authority and that the Division’s action pursuant to delegated authority had been automatically
stayed.”
Regarding the review of these statements, the Commission set 26th October as the date for third parties to file statements for or against the decision of the Division.
William Rhind, the Chief Executive Officer of GraniteShares submitted one of the comments on the matter. Here, he stated that the funds will not be directly invested in Bitcoin but rather be invested through futures contract. This will be supported by CBOE Futures Exchange [CFE] or the Chicago Mercantile Exchange [CME]. In his comment, Rhind included:
“The funds’ futures contract positions will be rolled over before maturity so that the funds will never be directly exposed to bitcoin.”
According to one of the other comments, Bitcoin is believed to have been created with the notion that USD has no intrinsic value. Regarding this, the comment concluded that the creators of Bitcoin are of the idea that a money with no intrinsic value can become universal. Therefore, the community of Bitcoin and its existence may remain limited within a small sect.
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