• SEC to consider approval of Ark’s spot Bitcoin ETF ahead this week on August 13.
• Ark Invest chief Cathie Wood believes that the securities regulator should approve all Bitcoin ETF applications at once.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is facing a deadline of August 13 in order to either approve or disapprove Ark Invest’s spot Bitcoin ETF application. Along with Ark, eight other financial giants including BlackRock, Bitwise, VanEck, and WisdomTree, are awaiting approval.

Ark submitted an application for a spot in Bitcoin ETF to the Federal Register on May 15. The SEC announced in the Federal Register on June 15 that it would make a decision on the application by August 13. Also, the Federal Register mentioned Aug. 13 “as the date by which the Commission shall either approve or disapprove or institute proceedings to determine whether to disapprove, the proposed rule change.”

But the SEC has the option to extend the decision deadline to up to 240 days. This means that the final response from the SEC for the Ark application could potentially be delayed until January 10, 2024. Other applications, like the one from Bitwise Asset Management, could be delayed until March 2024.

SEC’s Back and Forth With Bitcoin ETFs

In the past, the SEC said “no” to applications for regular Bitcoin ETFs due to concerns about market manipulation and fraud in the markets. However, it did approve the ETFs linked to Bitcoin futures.

Now, the new batch of applications has something different: an agreement to share information with exchanges like Nasdaq and Cboe. This means they would share details about trading, clearing, and customer IDs. This could help prevent cheating in the markets and make sure your investment doesn’t end up in the wrong hands, like what happened with FTX.

However, it’s not sure if these changes will make the SEC say “yes” to a regular Bitcoin ETF. Reports say the SEC wasn’t happy with the new applications and exchanges are hurrying to fix things in their applications to satisfy the SEC.

SEC to Approve All Spot Bitcoin ETFs Simultaneously

Considering that the world’s top financial giants are in the race for spot Bitcoin ETF approvals, it would be difficult for the US SEC to pick one over the other and give the first mover advantage. Thus, many analysts believe that the SEC would approve several spot Bitcoin ETF applications at once. World’s largest crypto asset manager Grayscale was among the first to propose this.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV on Monday, August 7, Cathie Wood said: “I think the SEC, if it’s going to approve a Bitcoin ETF, will approve more than one at once”. This was quite in reverse to her earlier view wherein Cathie Wood stated that her firm would be the first to get a potential approval of the long-awaited product.

Wood believes that approving all spot Bitcoin ETF applications at once could usher more than $50 billion in demand for the asset class. “I believe Cathie is noticing and learning about the same things we are,” said James Seyffart, an ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.

He also mentioned that the easiest way forward for the regulator would be to give the green light to all, or at least several, Bitcoin investment funds simultaneously. This is especially true if Grayscale Investments LLC is successful in its legal case against the SEC.