Cathie Wood’s ARK, 21Shares Refile For Bitcoin ETF 

ARK Invest Management and 21Shares US have again filed to launch a spot bitcoin ETF in the U.S. after their first joint attempt was rejected earlier this year. 

Earlier this week, the Securities and Exchange Commission began proceedings to review a rule change that would allow the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF to list. The regulator has followed the same process in nine earlier rejections over the last 18 months. 

That specific process can take around 10 months from submission to final decision based on how many review extensions the agency takes. 

ARK and 21Shares first filed for a spot bitcoin ETF in late June 2021. That bid was rejected in March of this year. The SEC has broadly rejected spot cryptocurrency ETFs based on their filers’ intentions of using an average price from several large crypto exchanges rather than using the price from a regulated exchange. The latest filing intends to use the average prices from 14 exchanges via an index managed by S&P Dow Jones Indices. 

The new filing points to several unregulated currency and metals markets that underlie exchange-traded products such as the first several gold trusts, arguing those have set a precedent for crypto ETFs to be approved.  

It also argues the surveillance the Chicago Mercantile Exchange does for its bitcoin futures market—and by extension the several bitcoin futures ETFs—can also fulfill the SEC’s demands for price manipulation resistance. 

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