Spot Ether ETFs Likely to Debut by July 2: Report
Prediction from Bloomberg analyst came days after SEC Chair said approval would occur this summer.
Spot Ethereum exchange traded funds will likely begin trading on July 2, Bloomberg Senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas wrote in a tweet, moving up his previous forecast by a few days based on what he said were conversations between issuers and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Balchunas wrote in a post on the social media platform X Friday that he was accelerating his forecast from July 4. He said he had heard that the agency had responded to issuers' S-1 registration statements for the proposed products earlier in the day with only light comments, and was asking for replies in a week.
"We are moving up our over/under date for the launch of spot Ether ETF,...hearing the Staff sent issuers comments on S-1s today, and they're pretty light, nothing major, asking for them back in a week," Balchunas tweeted. "Decent chance they work to declare them effective the next week and get it off their plate bf holiday wknd."
Balchunas's forecast followed just a day after SEC Chair Gary Gensler told U.S. senators at a hearing in Washington D.C. that regulators might approve the funds this summer. The ETFs will be based on the ongoing price of ether, the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain.
Read More: Gensler Sees Ethereum Spot ETF Approval This Summer
The SEC is currently weighing applications by VanEck, BlackRock, Fidelity, Bitwise and Grayscale, among others. Existing ETFs offering exposure to ethereum are based on futures contracts, similar to the way bitcoin ETFs offered only futures exposure before the spot funds were approved in January.
Balchunas wrote that he had "started to feel like an SEC approval would take longer so this is kinda good news," adding "anything poss but this is our best guess as of now."
On May 23, the SEC approved a rule change that primed the spot Ethereum ETFs for a final approval that only weeks earlier seemed unlikely. That change submitted by the Nasdaq, NYSE and Cboe, where the funds would be listed, addressed concerns about potential market manipulation and fraud. Greenlighting S-1 registration statements is generally a formality and ETFs generally begin trading the following day.
Ether Dips
Ether's dipped today, trading just above $3,500, conintuing a 12-day slump, according to crypto markets data provider CoinMarketCap. The ProShares Ether Strategy ETF (EETH), which seeks to mirror ether's performance through futures contracts, was up 3.8%.
Separately, David Hirsch, the head of the SEC's Crypto Asset and Cyber Unit in the agency's Enforcement Division wrote in a LinkedIn post that he had left the agency after nearly nine years.
Read More: SEC Changes Ethereum Rule, Sets Stage for ETF Approval
