No spot Bitcoin ETFs approved so far: US SEC official Mark Uyeda

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has yet to approve any spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund listings to date, commissioner Mark Uyeda said at the sidelines of a forum in Singapore on Wednesday.

“We’ve had a number of applications ... none of those have been approved to date,” said Uyeda, who was in Singapore to
speak at the ICI Global Asset Management Asia Forum.

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Earlier this month, the SEC delayed a decision on whether to allow a spot bitcoin ETF by stock-picker Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest and crypto investment product firm 21Shares to list and trade on Cboe Global Markets until January 27.

The regulator has rejected over a dozen spot bitcoin ETF applications, and approved several bitcoin futures-based ETFs.

The rejections have focused on applicants’ lack of surveillance-sharing agreements with regulated markets relating
to the spot funds’ underlying assets.

Such agreements entail sharing trade data and other information to allow the exchange to detect manipulation.

Uyeda added that the SEC continues to consider applications filed by exchanges “as they come up.”

The past few weeks have been turbulent for the cryptocurrency sector, after major exchange FTX collapsed, wiping billions in value off the market.

“We have always had these concerns and so we continue to think of these issues we continue to take enforcement actions,” he said, when asked about how the regulators’ thinking has shifted after the FTX collapse.

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