BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager with over $8 trillion in assets under management, has yet to reintroduce its Bitcoin ETF filing to the SEC. The company needs to resubmit its documentation after regulators indicated a lack of clarity; but the company has not yet done so. An expert weighs in on possible reasons.
BlackRock, the behemoth asset management firm with a portfolio exceeding $8 trillion, has yet to update its proposal for a Bitcoin ETF, despite indications from US regulators that the submitted documentation was lacking.
In the middle of June, the New York-based firm submitted a proposal to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the launch of a physical Bitcoin ETF, a type of investment instrument that has been eagerly anticipated but has yet to receive approval from US market regulators.
This move, which occurred amidst a tense regulatory environment for the cryptocurrency industry, seemed to spark a race for Bitcoin ETFs, with other firms such as WisdomTree, Invesco, and Fidelity rushing to submit their own proposals for similar Bitcoin funds.
However, at the end of last week, the SEC returned the proposals, stating they were not sufficiently ‘clear and complete’. According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, the agency noted that the documentation was missing details such as the names of the cryptocurrency exchanges responsible for the shared supervision of the funds’ underlying assets.
The SEC allowed companies to correct the documentation and resubmit their proposals. On the same day, Fidelity reintroduced its proposal, naming Coinbase as its partner for the ETF offer. So far, it has not been reported that BlackRock has reintroduced its proposal.
Among the theories, Balchunas suggested that it is possible that BlackRock has reintroduced its proposal, but the information has not yet been made public due to a delay in updating Nasdaq’s website.
Balchunas’ second theory centers on the possibility that the firm is taking time to detail more the terms of the Shared Supervision Agreement (SSA) of its Bitcoin ETF. Balchunas, who rated this theory as ‘the most interesting’, referred to the WSJ report, which suggests that regulators desire more ‘clarity and completeness’.
