TL;DR
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The SEC has denied several applications for ‘spot Bitcoin ETFs,’ which allow investors to invest in Bitcoin without actually holding the coin.
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Garyscale took their case to the U.S. Court of Appeals…and at the time of this writing – in fact, as of a few minutes ago: A judge ordered a review of the case!
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The decision will no longer be in the hands of the SEC, but instead, the hands of a (hopefully) un-biased third party (a judge – or judges).
Full Story
Yesterday’s news cycle sucked – but it’s all been made up for today!
Why’re we so excited? Let’s start here…
The SEC has denied several applications for ‘spot Bitcoin ETFs,’ which allow investors to invest in Bitcoin without actually holding the coin.
I.e. Investors buy a share of a company → that company takes their money and uses it to buy Bitcoin.
(This method allows investors to buy BTC, without having to worry about navigating regulatory guidelines – the folks running ETF do it for them).
Now…Grayscale was one of the companies that had its application denied by the SEC.
And they weren’t too happy about it.
So they took their case to the U.S. Court of Appeals…and at the time of this writing – in fact, as of a few minutes ago:
A judge ordered a review of the case!
Damn. Ok, feels like that didn’t hit as hard as we wanted it to.
But it should hit like a ton of bricks, strapped to an African savanna elephant, hurtling towards you at 100mph in a 40 zone.
The court essentially said to the SEC:
“Your argument as to why this ETF should be denied (the same one you’ve been making for a decade) makes absolutely no sense.
…and in the absence of a coherent argument – this is seen as unlawful.”
So what next?
Well, there’re a few avenues it could go down…
But as long as:
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The SEC can’t successfully appeal the ruling, and…
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The court doesn’t give the SEC an opportunity to reject the filing on different grounds
Then it all essentially leads to this:
The decision will no longer be in the hands of the SEC, but instead, the hands of a (hopefully) un-biased third party (a judge – or judges).
If Grayscale can argue a fair case as to why this ETF should be green-lit, while the SEC continues to bumble incoherently…
We might have ourselves a spot Bitcoin ETF!
Which would likely attract billions of dollars of investment into Bitcoin.
(And billions of investment into a scarce asset usually leads to massive upward price movement).
This – and we can’t stress it enough – we love to see.
