Fidelity Refiles for Spot Bitcoin ETF
The refiling for the asset manager's previously-rejected fund comes about two weeks after BlackRock applied for its own spot bitcoin ETF.
Jun 29, 2023 at 5:17 p.m. UTCAsset management giant Fidelity has refiled paperwork for its Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust, a spot bitcoin ETF.
The move comes roughly two weeks after BlackRock's (BLK) iShares unit submitted paperwork for the iShares Bitcoin Trust, also a spot bitcoin ETF. Fidelity in 2021 had originally applied to launch the Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust, but that effort was rejected by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2022.
Since the BlackRock spot ETF filing earlier in June, a number of other fund companies have done similar, including Invesco (IVZ) and WisdomTree, and a report earlier this week said a Fidelity filing was imminent.
Similar to the BlackRock filing, today's paperwork from Fidelity includes a "surveillance sharing agreement" with an unnamed U.S. spot-based bitcoin trading platform, the purpose of which is to help ease SEC concerns about market manipulation.
Fidelity also noted losses recently borne by crypto participants thanks to a number of insolvencies of both custodians and centralized exchanges, and said access to a vehicle such as a spot bitcoin ETF would have protected "countless investors."
So far, the SEC has not made a decision regarding any of the new applications. While many seem optimistic about the application from BlackRock – which has received a green light for all of its previous 575 ETF applications, except one – some remain skeptical.
CoinShares’ chief product officer Townsend Lansing said on a podcast Monday that he sees a 10% chance that BlackRock’s application gets approved, arguing that what the SEC wants to see is that the majority of bitcoin trading is facilitated on a U.S. crypto exchange.
The price of bitcoin (BTC) is little-changed on the news at $30,500.
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