By
Godfrey Benjamin
June 28th, 2024
Gary Gensler, SEC Chair, talked about the approval of spot Ethereum (ETH) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on Tuesday, June 25, stating that the approval process is “going smoothly” while being hesitant to reveal a timeline for the approval.
The SEC recently approved the 19b-4 filings for spot Ethereal (ETH) ETF applications submitted by leading asset management firms like VanEck, BlackRock, and Fidelity. However, the agency has yet to approve the S-1 filings for these products. “I don’t speak about elections,” Gensler said at the Bloomberg Invest Summit in New York.
Gensler noted that “it’s really about the asset managers making the full disclosure so that those registration statements can go effective,” adding:
“It’s something our Division of Corporation Finance handles hundreds if not thousands of times over anybody’s career,” Gensler added. “It’s smoothly functioning — it’s really up to the asset managers to make the proper disclosures.”
On the other hand, Senior Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas recently took to social media platform X to predict the approval of spot ETH ETFs by July 2nd. Interestingly, the ETF issuers filed amended registration statements last week, and as per Balchunas, the SEC sent comments on their filings. However, the comments were “light” and “nothing major”, said the analyst.
Further, Gensler shared concerns regarding the classification of cryptocurrencies as securities and how many digital asset firms are not complying with its policies. The SEC Chair added that “the American public is not getting the proper disclosure that they are required to get by law, but they need.”
“My role as a securities regulator – as chair of this great 5,000-person agency that oversees $120 trillion capital markets – is to look out for investors, look out for issuers and, where appropriate, to be a cop on the beat,” Gensler said.
SEC Chair Refuses to Talk About Upcoming Elections
The SEC Chair refused to comment on the upcoming 2024 United States presidential elections and the role played by the digital asset sector. “I don’t speak about elections,” Gensler said when asked about the potential impact that cryptocurrencies might have on the elections.
He said that the primary focus of his job as the Chair of the SEC is “protecting the investors, looking after issuers’ access to markets”, unwilling to answer if the regulator’s crypto policies might hurt the campaign of current US President Joe Biden.
On the other hand, major Republican candidate and former US President, Donald Trump, has won over the digital asset community by expressing his support for Bitcoin (BTC) and other digital assets. Trump has stated that he would completely ban the creation of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the US. The billionaire also announced that he would accept crypto for campaign donations.
ARK Invest’s Cathie Wood, a major supporter of Bitcoin, said that she would vote for Trump and not Biden. Also, the Winklevoss twins, the founders of crypto exchange Gemini, said that they would vote for Trump.