Greg King, the CEO of Osprey Funds, isn’t holding his breath for a Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) approval from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this year.
While in conversation with Yahoo Finance’s Jared Blikre and Seana Smith on July 19. He said he believes that the U.S. SEC has so much pending work for 2021. He believes that a BTC ETF approval is unlikely to make the cut.
“If a Bitcoin ETF is coming through the Gensler administration, my view is it’s not going to happen this year […] There’s also been quite a bit of sort of a body of language and rhetoric and points that have been made by the staff with previous applications that need to be addressed. And so this isn’t a slam dunk.”
When asked about his view on the US leading on the regulatory front in crypto space,King said that the U.S. is “decidedly behind” but that “that’s obviously by choice”:
“Well, unfortunately, I don’t think that they have led, at least in our part of the ecosystem asset management. You’ve seen Bitcoin ETFs approved in Canada and Europe and elsewhere. And the US is decidedly behind.” Said Greg. “I think they’re thinking about this, if I had to guess, more holistically, beyond just whether a Bitcoin ETF makes sense or not at this point, but really, more along the lines of what precedent are we going to set when we approve one.” He added.
While ETFs are getting rejections from the US SEC, Canada has already approved three Bitcoin ETFs. Last month, Latin America got its first Bitcoin ETF listed on the Brazilian Stock Exchange.
