By Avi Salzman
The review process for an exchange-traded fund holding the cryptocurrency Ether is "going smoothly" SEC Chair Gary Gensler said on Tuesday, paving the way for a potential new crypto ETF in the coming months.
Gensler, answering questions at the Bloomberg Invest conference in New York, didn't elaborate on the timeline for the ETF. Ether is the second most valuable cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, boasting a market value of $410 billion. The SEC changed rules last month that make it more likely a spot Ether ETF will be approved. There are already ETFs based on Ether futures.
Under Gensler, the SEC has expanded the number of ways that investors can buy cryptocurrencies. Most notably, the SEC approved Bitcoin ETFs that have attracted billions of dollars worth of investments and helped lift the price of Bitcoin to record highs.
But Gensler has also been one of crypto's harshest critics. On Tuesday, he said that much of crypto is "built up on a business model that is a noncompliant model." He believes "the public has really been harmed" by the industry's excesses.
The SEC sued major crypto platform Coinbase, alleging that it sells unregistered securities -- a claim that Coinbase has denied. On Tuesday, Gensler reiterated his concerns that the "tokens" that investors are buying on some platforms are actually securities. "The public are not getting the disclosure that you're supposed to get" when you buy securities, he said. Gensler said that the prosecutions of some of the industry's most notorious operators show just how dangerous it has become. "This is a field that the leading lights a couple of years ago are either in jail, about to go to jail, or awaiting extradition," he said.
Write to Avi Salzman at avi.salzman@barrons.com
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 25, 2024 17:38 ET (21:38 GMT)
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