Bloomberg exchange-traded funds (ETFs) analyst Eric Balchunas believes the odds of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approving a spot Ethereum (ETH) ETF by late May are low.
Responding to a question regarding a post he published on the social media platform X saying he’s pessimistic about the approval of an ETH spot ETF, Balchunas says in an appearance on the David Lin YouTube channel that one of his reasons is that the process of approval is running behind schedule.
“The final due date is May 21st, I believe. We are now six weeks away, the SEC hasn’t given any comments yet to the issuers. Comments meaning the issuers give them these regulatory filings, the SEC normally would write back to them and say, ‘Hey, we have 10 questions for you. Can you please address these and send us a new filing.’
Then they read the new filing and they give him another set of comments. That takes weeks if not months. And that hasn’t been started yet. And so from our… we have good sourcing too… it feels like the SEC has deliberately and has chosen not to comment.”
The senior Bloomberg ETF analyst says the SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s opinions could also be hindering the approval of a spot Ethereum ETF.
“Gensler in his heart, I think we all agree, thinks Ether is a security. He doesn’t want it to be treated like a commodity. So if he approves it he would be saying it’s a commodity. So it goes against his very fabric.”
Balchunas further says that the SEC is currently not under pressure to greenlight a spot Ethereum ETF unlike in the case of the spot Bitcoin (BTC) ETF whose approval was preceded by Grayscale winning a lawsuit against the markets regulator.
In the ruling that went against the regulator, the judge found the SEC’s failure to approve a Grayscale Bitcoin exchange-traded product to be unlawful.
“I don’t think there’s any political wiggle room at all for Gensler and I don’t think he wants to anyway. But Bitcoin had all those things going for it; it had a case they lost, Gensler was okay with it being a commodity and the political situation wasn’t as tense.”
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