Will Beck, head of digital assets at WisdomTree, an exchange-traded fund (ETF) provider, said US regulators will “ultimately get there” about approving a spot Bitcoin investment vehicle, but dealing with allegations of market manipulation could be a challenge. .
Speaking to Cointelegraph at the Converge22 conference in San Francisco on September 29, Beck said that WisdomTree will not pursue Grayscale by taking legal action against the US Securities and Exchange Commission for its refusal to implement a Bitcoin (BTC) ETF. According to Beck, the company plans to “engage more productively” with the SEC without a lawsuit, but it may take time to address some of the regulator’s reasons for rejecting instant Bitcoin ETF applications.
“We all kind of watch this and see what happens,” Beck said. “The reasons given by [the Securities and Exchange Commission] were about the possibility of market manipulation – that bitcoin trading does not take place in regulated places […] There have been some questions in the past, the ability of qualified custodians, whether banks or otherwise to be able to save Crypto assets on behalf of a registered company like this.”
he added:
“I think the first bit of market manipulation seems to be the hardest kind to break through, which has been the biggest slowdown.”
Beck said the company will continue to engage with US regulators about the ETF offering. WisdomTree has several exchange-traded products linked to different cryptocurrencies in Europe and has submitted more than one application to the SEC for a US spot Bitcoin ETF offer. One of the company’s applications was rejected by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in December 2021, after which WisdomTree amended its filing to designate a US bank as a crypto custodian for its Bitcoin credit.
Related Topics: Self-guardianship is not for everyone: WisdomTree exec on “Be Your Own Bank”
While Grayscale’s legal action against the SEC over its ETF offering continues, the company’s chief legal officer, Craig Salem, suggested that it could take one to two years to find a solution. The US regulator first began approving BTC derivatives-linked investment vehicles in October 2021 but has rejected 16-firm instant Bitcoin ETF applications, often saying that the investment vehicles are not “designed to prevent fraudulent and manipulative business and practices.”
