First Mover Americas: Grayscale Urges SEC for Equal Treatment of Spot Bitcoin ETF Applications

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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) should approve all spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) applications simultaneously to grant equal treatment to all applicants, Grayscale Investments said in a statement to the agency on Thursday. An approval of only the listed proposals – which include, Ark 21 Shares, Invesco Galaxy, iShares (BlackRock), Valkyrie, VanEck, WisdomTree and Wise Origin (Fidelity) – would reflect a positive “but sudden and significant change in the Commission’s application of the relevant statutory standard, and as such would improperly grant an unfairly discriminatory and prejudicial first-mover advantage to these proposals,” read the statement. Grayscale remains locked in a months-long legal battle with the SEC to have its own application to convert its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into an ETF.

Bitcoin (BTC) held above $29,000 early Friday while Japanese and U.S. government bond yields rose after the Bank of Japan (BOJ) announced a slight hawkish tweak to its liquidity-boosting bond-buying program known as yield curve control (YCC). The central bank retained its short-term interest rate target at 0.1% and the 10-year government bond yield target around 0%. The BOJ, however, said that its previous 0.5% band for the 10-year bond would be a reference and not a hard cap, promising more flexibility in its yield curve control policy. The yield on the 10-year Japanese Government Bond (JGB) is higher by 11 basis points to 0.55%.

Bitcoin could reach $300,000 by 2028, said Mark Yusko, Morgan Creek Capital Management founder and CEO, on CoinDesk TV’s First Mover. Yusko made the prediction while comparing bitcoin to gold. Gold is not portable or divisible, whereas bitcoin is, the CEO of the $1.6 billion asset management firm explained. "Bitcoin fixes both of these issues, and is equally scarce," Yusko added, arguing that the digital asset could eventually catch up to the precious metal’s valuation. “The monetary value of gold is about $6 trillion, I think bitcoin can replace all of that, the monetary equivalent of $6 trillion is about a 10X from here, which gives us a price of about $300K,” said Yusko.

- Omkar Godbole