(Reuters) – Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest and crypto investment firm 21Shares are applying for regulatory approval to establish an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that would directly hold ether, as stated in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday.
This move marks the first effort to list a fund in the U.S. that will invest directly in ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
The crypto sector received a positive boost when the U.S. District of Columbia Court of Appeals recently made a landmark ruling, stating that the SEC was mistaken in rejecting an application from Grayscale Investments, a crypto asset manager, to list an ETF tracking the price of bitcoin.
Both the cryptocurrency and asset management industries have closely followed this case for years, as they have been working to persuade the SEC to approve a spot bitcoin ETF.
Earlier this year, Cboe Global Markets submitted a proposal to the U.S. SEC to list and trade shares of a spot bitcoin ETF by Ark Invest and 21Shares on the Cboe BZX exchange. However, the SEC has postponed its decision on approval.
In recent years, the regulator has turned down numerous applications for spot bitcoin ETFs, citing insufficient levels of trading surveillance that could potentially expose the underlying spot market to fraud and manipulation.
(Reporting by Jaiveer Singh Shekhawat in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)
Credit: The Star : Tech Feed
