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- Gary Gensler has told the Senate Appropriations Committee that the Ether ETF approval process is progressing smoothly at the staff level and could launch by September.
- Gensler, however, ducked questions about whether ETH is a commodity, which could significantly impact the future of the crypto as it becomes a mainstream asset.
Ethereum exchange-traded funds (ETFs) could launch in the next three months, Gary Gensler says. The Securities and Exchange Commission chair, however, declined to make a stand on whether Ether is a commodity.
SEC approved ETH ETFs last month, including applications from existing Bitcoin ETF issuers like BlackRock, VanEck, Fidelity, and ARK, as well as new entrants like Franklin Templeton. However, as Crypto News Flash has reported, the market has been uncertain about when the regulator would approve the final forms and allow the ETFs to start trading.
Speaking to the Senate Appropriations Committee, Gensler said everything is working as it should.
Individual issuers are still working through the registration process that’s working smoothly. I would envision sometime over the course of this summer.
In its approval of the ETFs last month, the SEC only signed off on the applicants’ form 19b-4 filings. However, for the ETFs to start trading, the SEC needs to sign off on the S-1 registration statements as well, which Gensler told the lawmakers would not take too long.
Ether trades at $3.510, gaining a slight 0.55% in the past day despite a 13% dip in its trading volume hit $13.3 billion.
Is Ether a Commodity?
Gensler shared the hearing with Rostin Benham, the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). They both faced the question, “Is Ether a commodity?” Benham quickly responded, confirming that his agency considers Ether a commodity.
When the committee chair, U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), asked Gensler the same question, he danced around it and, in the end, didn’t offer a definite answer.
Gensler’s tap dancing didn’t go unnoticed, with Hagerty criticizing the SEC’s model, which forced several companies to exit the U.S. and set up in other friendlier jurisdictions.
You’re not prioritizing rule-making for areas that desperately need it. And here I’m talking about setting in place a constructive set of rules of the road for the crypto industry. This is an innovative industry. It’s an industry that the United States should be leading.
Indeed, U.S. crypto firms have been increasingly reassessing the opportunity to set up in places like Hong Kong, Singapore, the U.K., Switzerland, and France as U.S. regulators crack the whip on the industry. This even includes some of the largest and most successful crypto companies in America, such as Ripple and Coinbase, who have both revealed they have weighed the possibility of relocating.
Sen. Hagerty urged the SEC and CFTC to stop putting up endless roadblocks for crypto firms and welcome the industry. As Crypto News Flash has reported, this call for crypto-friendly regulations could get much louder if Donald Trump recovers the seat he lost to Joe Biden four years ago.
