After a decade of waiting, rejecting, and delaying at best, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission finally greenlighted nearly a dozen spot Bitcoin ETFs at the start of 2024.
Their impact on BTC’s price has been undeniable as the demand for those products among traditional investors has skyrocketed. Now that there are existing exchange-traded funds tracking the performance of at least one cryptocurrency, the community speculates on whether there will be a follow-up, particularly with ETH.
The ETH ETF Applications
Numerous companies within and outside of the cryptocurrency industry want to follow the example with Bitcoin and have products tracking the performance of the second-largest digital asset. Perhaps the two biggest names with current applications with the SEC are BlackRock and Fidelity. However, the regulator keeps delaying making a decision on either of their filings.
Amid the latest SEC delays, industry experts started questioning the agency’s motives and drew comparisons with how the watchdog operated before rejecting countless BTC applications throughout the past ten years. As such, the overall optimism around the ETH ETF applications started to wind down in recent weeks despite previous predictions that the Commission will approve all filings in May 2024.
The most recent analyses on the matter suggest that the SEC plans to reject all spot Ethereum ETF applications that have due dates in May.
Impact on ETH’s Price?
While the community keeps speculating on whether potential Ethereum ETFs will be a flop compared to BTC ETFs, we decided to ask Perplexity – the popular ChatGPT alternative – about what would happen to ETH’s price if the SEC indeed rejects all current proposals. Interestingly, the AI chatbot believes the agency’s decision, no matter what it will be, won’t have such a big impact on ETH, at least in the short term.
“If the SEC rejects all spot Ethereum ETF applications, the impact on ETH’s price may not be as significant as initially anticipated. Analysts and experts suggest that whether the ETFs are approved or rejected, it may not have a substantial effect on the altcoin’s price in the short term.”
This theory could have some merit, given the BTC ETF rejections in the last ten years. Bitcoin became immune to the SEC’s actions after so many rejections. However, the Ethereum case is quite different since the asset doesn’t have such a long history with the regulator.
Additionally, once the Commission greenlighted all Bitcoin ETFs, the underlying asset’s price went on a massive rollercoaster in the next few weeks. Once the demand and inflows increased, so did BTC’s price. The vice-versa effect is also visible, as we have seen in the past week.
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