Grayscale, SEC will voice oral arguments over GBTC ETF conversion in March

Please fol­low and like us:
Pin Share

Grayscale and the U.S. Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion will soon have their oral argu­ments heard in court regard­ing the con­ver­sion of Grayscale Bit­coin Trust into an exchange-trad­ed fund, accord­ing to a court fil­ing dat­ed Jan. 23.

The SEC made the deci­sion to reject a pro­pos­al from Grayscale that would allow the com­pa­ny to con­vert its Bit­coin trust into an ETF in June 2022.

Those oral argu­ments are now sched­uled to be heard at 9:30 a.m. EST on March 7 in the Dis­trict of Colum­bia Court of Appeals. Grayscale not­ed that the argu­ments were orig­i­nal­ly expect­ed to be heard no soon­er than the sec­ond quar­ter of this year.

The com­po­si­tion of the argu­ment pan­el will be revealed thir­ty days pri­or to that date. Final briefs are due on Feb­ru­ary 3 — just over one month pri­or to the oral argu­ment date.

Grayscale has been attempt­ing to con­vert its Grayscale Bit­coin Trust (GBTC) into an exchange-trad­ed fund since Octo­ber 2021. The com­pa­ny chose to advance its pro­pos­al at that time because the SEC had just approved the first Bit­coin futures ETF.

Though oth­er Bit­coin future ETFs quick­ly gained approval, Grayscale’s GBTC pro­pos­al described a Bit­coin spot ETF. As such, it faced greater reg­u­la­to­ry scruti­ny. The SEC ulti­mate­ly reject­ed Grayscale’s pro­pos­al in June 2022, argu­ing that Grayscale did not pro­vide assur­ances about mar­ket manip­u­la­tion and investor protection.

Since that rejec­tion, Grayscale has pushed aggres­sive­ly to have its ETF pro­pos­al re-exam­ined. The com­pa­ny imme­di­ate­ly filed a law­suit and peti­tion for review. The SEC and Grayscale have each filed var­i­ous briefs in court over the past six months.

Grayscale has also engaged with the pub­lic on the mat­ter. CEO Michael Son­nen­shein sug­gest­ed in Decem­ber that Grayscale could buy back a por­tion of GBTC if its ETF con­ver­sion fails. More recent­ly, Grayscale attempt­ed to assure the pub­lic that the ongo­ing cryp­tocur­ren­cy liq­uid­i­ty cri­sis will not affect its efforts.

Grayscale BTC cur­rent­ly has 643,572 BTC ($14.8 bil­lion) under man­age­ment. How­ev­er, its val­ue fell sig­nif­i­cant­ly over the course of last year, and it now trades at a dis­count. Those loss­es were some­what off­set by 10% gains last week.



Source link

Please fol­low and like us:
Pin Share

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *