Former chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Mr. Clayton, said that the regulator will inevitably approve ETFs based on the spot price of the first cryptocurrency.
“Approval is inevitable. The dichotomy between futures and cash products cannot go on forever,” he said.
Clayton said he was not surprised by the agency’s decision to delay consideration of applications for the launch of spot bitcoin ETFs from BlackRock, Fidelity, Bitwise, VanEck, WisdomTree, Invesco and Valkyrie until mid-autumn.
At the same time, he also declined to answer the question of how he would have acted in the place of the current chairman of the Commission, Gary Gensler.
“It is clear that bitcoin is not a security. It is clear to all that retail and institutional investors want access to it. And more importantly, some of our most trusted vendors want to provide bitcoin to the retail public,” he added.
On June 15, BlackRock filed an application with the SEC for an investment product based on digital gold. Following the financial giant, similar requests came from Valkyrie, Fidelity Investments, WisdomTree and Invesco. However, the regulator returned all applications.
