The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) may approve spot Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs), despite the negative predictions of a number of cryptocurrency analysts and the larger crypto community. However, some analysts believe that “there is room for surprise.” Crypto trader Matthew Hyland posted on May 17th on X, saying, “If by some chance the SEC decides to approve then so many will be caught severely offside.” Hyland has 142,000 followers.
Who will really be selling if 90% of people believe that the ETH ETF will be rejected and most of those people believe that it would cause a cryptocurrency crash? He went on to say that the likelihood of rejection is “priced in.” According to statistics, Ether ETH is currently trading at $3,102 after falling down $3,116 at the time of posting.
According to New York-based crypto predictions platform Polymarket, Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas has estimated a 35% chance of acceptance, while the rest of the crypto community has estimated more like 7%. David Han, an institutional research analyst at Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange, thinks that “there is room for surprise to the upside on this decision.” In Coinbase’s monthly outlook report, which was released on May 15, Han said, “We believe the odds of approval are closer to 30-40%.”
In the run-up to the November US presidential election, Han said that voters will be more inclined to consider bitcoin, which means the SEC will be less inclined to stick with its denial decision. “It’s also less certain in our view that the SEC would be willing to front the political capital necessary to support a denial as crypto begins to take form as an election issue,” he said. Han added that there is a good chance that legal action will reverse the judgment made in the event that the VanEck and ARK Invest ETF applications are rejected by the original May 23 deadline.