Former BlackRock Director Forecasts Timeline for U.S. Bitcoin-ETF Approval

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will register the first spot Bitcoin-ETF within three to six months. This view was voiced by former BlackRock managing director Steven Shonfield, according to Decrypt.

He voiced his forecast during a panel discussion at the CCData Digital Assets Summit in London, with another former BlackRock director, Martin Brandall, in attendance.

The latter suggested that the SEC is likely to “green-light” all applications to launch exchange-traded funds based on the first cryptocurrency at the same time.

“I don’t think they want to give anyone the first-mover advantage,” Brandall said.

According to Shonfield, a good sign was that the Commission did not reject the list of applications outright, but asked for comments. He described this as “a meaningful improvement in dialogue.”

“There is also a Grayscale case that the SEC lost, and that means they will probably be required to allow the conversion of Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust into an ETF,” the executive noted.

In his view, BlackRock’s financial heft and name give it an edge in the race to bring an investment product to market.

Brandall disagreed, noting that several rivals tied to his former firm are more involved in trading digital assets.

“Everyone has a use case for crypto, and some are actually much closer to the ecosystem. So I think BlackRock faces a serious battle,” he underscored.

According to Brandall, approval of spot ETFs in the United States could attract $150-200 billion into Bitcoin products over three years.

In 2021, Canada became the first in North America to approve an exchange-traded fund based on the spot price of the leading cryptocurrency. The fund is managed by Purpose Investments.

According to CoinGecko, the fund holds 25,289 BTC (~$697 million at the time of writing). In assets, it trails the U.S.-listed futures-based Bitcoin ETF from ProShares, which holds 35,890 BTC (~$990 million).

BlackRock filed a submission to the SEC for a digital-gold-based investment product on June 15. Following the financial giant, similar requests came from Valkyrie, Fidelity Investments, WisdomTree and Invesco.

Earlier, former SEC lawyer John Reed Stark ruled out approval of a spot bitcoin ETF. However, experts Bernstein and former SEC chairman Jay Clayton assessed the chances of a fresh wave of contenders as high.