Following Wednesday’s landmark approval of multiple spot Bitcoin ETFs, hopes that a spot Ethereum ETF could be next to the market have pushed ETH to levels not seen since May 2022.
Ethereum is currently up 8.7% and trading at just over $2,620, per data from CoinGecko.
Bitcoin itself is trading relatively flat, up 2% over the past day. The SEC’s approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF followed several days of confusion on Tuesday, including fake tweets posted by a “compromised” SEC Twitter account.
Several hopefuls, including Ark 21Shares, BlackRock, Fidelity, and Grayscale, have applied for a spot Ethereum ETF with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
SEC approval for a spot Bitcoin ETF has been a long time coming, but traders are confident an Ethereum ETF could hit the market sooner.
Eric Balchunas, ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, pointed out that the Ethereum ETF has a 70% chance of being approved by May, the SEC’s final deadline for decisions on multi-branch Ethereum ETF applications. Balchunas noted that he had heard a “backchannel” that discovering an Ethereum ETF would be “okay.”
SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has repeatedly refused to confirm whether regulators consider Ethereum a security or a commodity.
Before taking his position at the SEC, Gensler said regulators deemed Ethereum “sufficiently decentralized” to qualify as a security. At the time, Gensler appeared to be referencing the much-quoted views of William Hinman, the SEC’s former director of corporate finance, in a June 2018 speech.
